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INVISIBLE LIFE
Director: Karim Aïnouz Cast: Julia Stockler, Carol Duarte, Gregorio Duvivier, António Fonseca, Bárbara Santos, Flávia Gusmão MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:19 Release Date: 12/20/19 (limited); 1/3/20 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 19, 2019 In a single night, the lives of two sisters are changed and re-defined in ways that neither could anticipate. Invisible Life, co-writer/director Karim Aïnouz's low-key tragedy, follows both sisters as the years pass in a relative flash, while the pain, the uncertainty, and at least the miniscule hope of not knowing linger for a lifetime. The two sisters, who have come of age in 1950s Rio de Janeiro, are Guida (Julia Stockler) and Eurídice (Carol Duarte). Guida has a date with a Greek sailor, whom she is convinced she will marry. Eurídice has grand plans to attend a music conservatory in Vienna, where she will begin her career as a professional pianist. Eurídice covers for her elder sister that night, but Guida doesn't return. Some time passes. Eurídice marries Antenor (Gregorio Duvivier), a businessman with strict ideas of a wife's role. After being shunned by the man she loves, a pregnant Guida returns home. Her father Manoel (António Fonseca) disowns his daughter, lying to Guida that Eurídice has indeed gone off to Vienna. Life continues, with the two sister unknowingly living in the same city. The screenplay by Murilo Hauser, Inés Bortagaray, and Aïnouz (based on Martha Batalha's novel) follows both women in equal measure and with equal compassion. Much of the story is founded upon assorted ironies (how close the sisters are, how each one finds misery in what might be dream of the other, and how they could find each other, if not for their fear of or faith in the father), but despite the constant struggles and missed chances, Aïnouz mostly evades letting the material slip into melodrama. The circumstances of the sisters' separation and the situations that almost, but never quite, reunite them matter, but the characters—their oppressed hopes, their longing for understanding, their struggles to make something worthwhile out of their environments—matter much more. The central performances from Stockler and Duarte help immensely in that regard. Invisible Life is, undoubtedly, filled with misery, especially in how Aïnouz portrays time slipping through the sisters' fingers without warning. That narrative trick of editing is the core of this tale, and it provides the film with a transcendent, heartbreaking cut that must be experienced to comprehend the full weight of it. We have seen months and years pass, but there is no anticipating Aïnouz's final cut—the deepest of them all. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for
strong sexual content/graphic nudity and some drug use)
