By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Starring: António Fonseca | Carol Duarte | Flávia Gusmão | Julia Stockler
Original language title: A Vida Invisível
Country: brazil, germany
Year: 2020
Running time: 139
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6390668/reference
Jeff says: “INVISIBLE LIFE begins with an allegory, two sisters climbing a mountain through a jungle, hand-in-hand. They become separated, and even though they are not far apart, they each cannot hear the other as they call out.
“It’s the early 1950s in Rio de Janeiro. Two sisters, Guida and Eurídice, late teens/early 20s, are chafing at having their plans called off, forced to dine at home to impress a business associate of their father, who owns a favela bakery. Guida cannot stop playing the piano because it feels like her fingers are dancing. She dreams of studying at a conservatory in Vienna, a perfectly reasonable dream, given her talent. Her impetuous older sister runs off early with her lover from Greece. She returns, but the story keeps the sisters parted, each unaware that the other lives so near.
“The story is maybe a little soapy, but it’s told well, and its primary purpose becomes, as it unwinds Guida and Eurídice’s histories, an almost sociological study of women in 1950s Brazil. Their lives are sad, but not unrewarded. As their paths diverge – one sister living on her own, mostly among women, poor and raising a child, the other governed by the strictures of a conservative family – the movie offers a nuanced view of the ordinary, its comforts and its limitations. No character’s life ends in regret, as best we can tell.
“The acting is terrific. Rio is lovingly framed. It wraps up with a wonderfully bittersweet ending. Prepare yourself for frank, sometimes brutal, sex. 4.5 cats”
Michael says: “It took three screenwriters to adapt the screenplay from a well-known 2016 novel, and while the critics all seem to love INVISIBLE LIFE, it didn’t quite work for me. This melodrama set over decades in Rio de Janeiro focuses on two sisters whose lives diverge in their late teens, and though they struggle to reunite, fate and some carefully placed lies keep them forever physically apart. Still, their spirits reach out for each other over the years as Guida, the free-spirited, independent girl grows up in poverty and struggle, forming strong bonds with the women in her neighborhood, and Eurídice, musical and introverted, follows the rules and ends up in a conventional marriage, living a life unlike the one she’d hoped for herself. Both struggle against the Latin patriarchy that tries desperately to keep them both stifled, in very different ways.
“I’m not sure what didn’t quite work for me. It felt like it was trying to get both sides of the coin, one the symbolic lives of two women kept apart, but bonded through their spirits, and two a realistic story about two women struggling through a culture and time that didn’t give them a lot of opportunity. I think if it had whole-heartedly embraced on side or the other, it would have been more successful. It was delightful to see Fernanda Montenegro (CENTRAL STATION) play Euridice toward the end of her life. I had honestly been thinking about Fernanda recently, wondering if she was still alive, and to see her not only alive, but working, and really commanding the screen when she appeared, was thrilling. 3 cats“