Cert 18
In this odyssey of fractured family life, director Karim Ainouz makes a triumphant return to feature films with this transcendent melodrama about the enduring bond between two forcibly separated sisters. Chronicling changes in the two sisters’ lives and exploring notions of family and friendship, love and loyalty, the film is undoubtedly full-blooded, while remaining subtle and nuanced to rewarding effect.
Dir: Karim Ainouz, Brazil/Germany, 136mins, 2019, subtitled.
Programme Notes
Lush melodramas are a dying breed, especially masterful ones like Karim Ainouz’s Invisible Life, that wear Douglas Sirkian genre conventions on their sleeve proudly and abundantly. From its very first frame, Ainouz’s vibrant and warmhued picture (the deserving winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival) envelops you within its tropical world of saturated colours and extreme sensations, to then gradually build up to a heart-rending finale, honouring the sisterly bond at its centre with an open-handed serving of tears.
Adapted from the novel by Martha Batalha, Invisible Life is knowingly old-fashioned, relentlessly emotional and deeply moving in its retelling of a 1950s Rio de Janeiro-set story that spans across decades through the trajectory of two sisters cruelly separated by a lie, their enforced parting made more painful by the rules of a rigid patriarchal society.
The closeness of the sisters is portrayed with startling finesse and economy in the film’s opening scenes and becomes significant later, when the two women find themselves on separate paths in their lives. Their intimacy, skilfully realised by Ainouz, remains intact throughout the story, promising the enduring hope of their eventual re-union. Profoundly observant of women’s hardships in the sentimental tradition of Latin American soaps, Ainouz must have experienced his own share of matriarchal love and support – and even witnessed the menacing claws of toxic masculinity that suffocate female experience in Brazil’s conservative societal groups.
With its graceful handling of the passage of time and laced with yearning, resilience and occasional cadences of Bach, Invisible Life is a sharp critique of societies that put powerful men in positions of authority and imprison women in their shadow. Always present, this theme comes into sharp focus during a superbly edited, devastating scene where the sisters miss each other in a restaurant by a matter of moments.
Invisible Life can also be seen as a celebration of female camaraderie and strength, expressed in the familial letters that, far too late, finally reach the caring hands for which they were intended. It’s that optimism and generosity of spirit that makes Ainouz’s beautiful film all the more sublime.
At the 2021 CinEuphoria Awards, Julia Stockler and Fernanda Montenegro won, respectively, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress while Karim Ainouz was winner of the International Competition Top Ten of the Year prize.
Acknowledgments: Tomris Laffly, rogerebert.com, Anon, IMDb.com
“This praiseworthy melodrama challenges the concepts of a patriarchal society and their outdated stereotypes of female gender. Its emotional richness adds to the story’s tragic elements and makes it abundantly clear that […] women in modern society should
choose their own way of life”
Dennis Schwartz, dennisschwartzreviews.com
Comments
Superb and very believable
Heartfelt and emotional – most of the male characters (understandably) reduced to mere ciphers
Too long, too sad but effective and well made
Not really … but the ending almost saved it! Sex scenes unnecessarily explicit