Don't Miss "Invisible Life"
Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 5:00PM 
After a limited release in US theaters, Karim Aïnouz's Invisible Life is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. The film was Brazil's submission for last year's Best International Feature Oscar and, although the Academy chose to overlook its merits, that doesn't mean the picture is undeserving of our attention. This tropical melodrama is one of 2019's most ravishing cinematic experiences, a saturated explosion of deep feeling and chromatic excess, as beautiful as it is devastating. Harkening back to the glory days of Old Hollywood's women's pictures, Invisible Life is like a cocktail made of equal parts Douglas Sirk and Black Orpheus, a hint of Fassbinder adding an abrasive zing to the recipe…
Based upon Martha Batalha's The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, this literary adaptation tells the tale of two sisters in midcentury Brazil. Like every pair of sisters in any fiction known to man, they're significantly different in temperament and dreams. While Eurídice is a well-behaved girl with a love for the piano, Guida is a wild child who spends the nights partying with foreign military men. One of such nights, she leaves and doesn't come back, having decided to elope with her European beau. From that moment onward, the two women are separated by the treacherous paths of life and a society sick with a plague of patriarchal oppression.
Parental rejections and a tapestry of lies hide from each sister how much the other one longs for her. Pregnant and unmarried, Guida becomes a social pariah, struggling to survive she's forced to build a new family, one of choice rather blood. As much as she thrives she still misses Eurídice, who has married a respectable man her parents approve and postponed her dreams of becoming a concert pianist. Both women's autonomy is denied by the men in their lives and to make matters worse, it's even difficult to hate them properly for their wrongdoings. Working from a screenplay penned by himself, Murilo Hauser and Inés Bortagaray, Karim Aïnouz treats all his characters with utmost dignity. Even at their worst, they're always palpably human.
There's also a strange sense of hope pervading the film. It's vaguely delusional, not to mention undeserved, but it exists and shades these women's longsuffering persistence with nobility, making it as beautiful as the landscapes of Rio de Janeiro. Their strength of spirit keeps dragging the film away from the ravine of misery porn, soothing our broken hearts and finding catharsis in the pain. Much praise must be given to the actresses who breathe life into these characters, for their work is miraculous. Turning their backs on underplayed subtlety, they embrace the operatic nature of the story and transfigure themselves into two great goddesses of the big screen.
As Guida, Julia Stockler is a Carioca Sophia Loren, rich in earthy sensuality and fiery expression. One never knows how the actress will play any given scene, giving a sense of risk and genuine danger to Guida's interactions. Whether laughing in the face of despondency or finding notes of melancholy in motherly warmth, Stockler is a force of nature. Carol Duarte may not have such a juicy role in Euridice, though that doesn't stop her from carving herself a monument of domestic despair. The way she acts through the sweaty authenticity of the many sex scenes is of particular wonder. Her silent reactions can make a simple glance sing an aria of sentimental contradiction.
The entire cast is magnificent, including a late-film cameo by the legendary Fernanda Montenegro, but the third star of the movie is Aïnouz formal dexterity. Invisible Life's images shine in saturated jewel tones and carefully composed tableaux, their content startling in its frank sexuality and carnal candor. It all feels worthy of a museum wall and authentically intimate at the same time. The music takes its cues from the cinematic tradition of the melodrama, lustful and melodic, while the astute editing binds the sisters' lives even when the story denies them that proximity. It's epicurean abandonment in the service of human drama.
Eurídice and Guida may not know it, but they're dancing a pas de deux throughout their bifurcated existences. The miracle of cinema portrays their separation and brings them together in a gesture of bittersweet ruthlessness, uniting on-screen what couldn't be joined in life. Even in their darkest moments, words of love from one storyline bleed into the other, color motifs repeat and echoes of the past make themselves felt in mournful daydreams. In the parlance of many a critic, melodrama is used as a term of derogation, but films like this prove the error of such linguistic confusions. When done right, melodrama can be heavenly.
With its formalistic perfection, a celebration of feminine camaraderie and sisterly love, Invisible Life is nothing short of divine ambrosia.
Reader Comments (10)
Funny, I thought about you posting here (recently available on Amazon). Then you do.
I showed my Mom some yesterday just because it's all Brazilian film. Cinematography is terrific, and the actors good, but in the bit I rewatched (up until he he comes up behind her on the piano), I saw much of the same things. Script isn't focused and the direction a little too melodramatic.
Watching in theaters I would notice every now and then the movie would make me think twice about disliking it and that maybe it was great. But, again, not focused, too melodramatic.
I'll watch it again, turn off the subtitles. Just because. But currently I see it is as a miss and would give it a solid thumbs down.
One of the best movies I watched last year ....
Saw it in a packed theatre at our film festival.
I'm from Brazil and I love Karim Aïnouz's cinema, but I was a little disappointed with this film. It is beautifully filmed, but I read the novel before watching the movie and found the script to be quite dishonest, it's a completely different story.
Fabio;
I don't think it's fair to fault film for not being similar to the book.
But I think dishonest is more in the direction.
Fabio -- Though I haven't read the novel yet, I've been thinking of doing so since watching Invisible Life. Your words made me even more curious, however.
Just out of curiosity, what sort of adaptation changes did you think hurt the film?
Me/Claudio - I know that a movie and a book are different things and a film adaptation can follow its own story, not being similar to the book. But in this particular case, I felt that the changes are a little dishonest and superficial. In the book, the sisters found each other right in the middle and they still have to deal with patriarchal oppression, in a more natural and subtle way. The movie is all about the fact that they never see each other again and then the plot seems far more obvious and forced, like a bad soap opera.
Fabio - Thanks for answering my question. I'll not deny my love for the film (I certainly don't think its plot seems forced or like a bad soap opera), but I can understand that were I familiar with the original text my reaction could have been drastically different. That does seem like a rather shocking change from the source material.
As always, I appreciate the feedback, especially when it's such a thought-provoking comment like yours. Thank you, once again.
I've read the book and loved it but found the movie a tad too soap opera-ish.The acting is commendable but the story meanders and loses its charm somewhere in the middle of the plot.
I saw this movie in a film festival in an Asian city late last year and although 'love' is probably not the exact word I will use to describe my experience and encounter with Invisible Life, I thought the theme of the tragedy of commons in a Maupassant sense was what I found compelling in the story. I don't mind melodrama, whether 'done right' or shabbily mounted. Melodrama can be a (probably subversive) filmic device or approach to upend spectatorial expectations. If it dwells on 'soap opera' territory, I see it as the preferred 'auteurial' approach and I cannot quite find the justification to impose my own desire how I want the story told. That said, it would be great to read the text material the film was based from and compare different modes of storytelling.
The cast was uniformly good. The men, flawed they might be, may be victims of the same patriarchal order they are consciously or unconsciously upholding. Although I find some of their actions despicable, it reminded me why films are good at this sort of thing: they introduce the viewer to situations and predicaments we may not encounter in real life but make them (and make me) believe these actions can happen. There is a bit of an 'affective blockage' that refuses to provide catharsis save for some rare moments, like when the younger Eurídice learned of the outcome of her piano audition, the sisters' forays into the forest, and a wink to the Orpheus legend. As for Fernanda Montenegro's late appearance in the story as the older Eurídice, she proved once again that a face can be an event and can be cinema's effective map to show unexpressed emotions, hint at untold tragedies felt, and an understanding of life's unfairness.
Thanks for the wonderful provocations in your piece, Cláudio. It makes the far-from-home experience of isolation from pandemic, tolerable.
Loved this so much. I watched it twice when I had the screener.
In a just world, it would’ve been nominated for Actress (Stockler), Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design, Production Design, Hair/Makeup, and International.