100
RogerEbert.com by Tomris Laffly
Lush melodramas are a dying breed, especially masterful ones like Karim Aïnouz’s Invisible Life that wear Douglas Sirkian genre conventions on their sleeve proudly and abundantly.
Invisible Life (A Vida Invisível)
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Brazil
- 2019
- · 139m
Director
Karim Aïnouz
Cast
Carol Duarte,
Julia Stockler,
Fernanda Montenegro,
Gregório Duvivier,
Bárbara Santos,
Flávia Gusmão
Genre
Drama
Born in Rio during the 1940s, two close-knit but very different sisters are kept apart from one another by a terrible lie and a conservative society. The film follows the estranged siblings over the course of their lives as each struggles to make a life for herself despite the period's restrictive expectations for women.
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What are critics saying?
100
TheWrap by Monica Castillo
Aïnouz’s Invisible Life reflects the kind of love story we rarely see on-screen, and it’s a gem worth discovering for yourself.
90
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
There’s such a disconcerting rush of lush imagery and action in the first 40 minutes or so of “Invisible Life” that one is apt to wonder whether there’s any kind of focused narrative. But the casual misdirection is setting the viewer up for an emotional kill.
90
Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang
It’s a drama of resilient women, thoughtless men and crushingly unrealized dreams, told with supple grace, deep feeling and an empathy that extends in every direction.
90
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
The lustrous textures, boldly saturated colors and lush sounds of The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao serve to intensify the intimacy of Karim Ainouz's gorgeous melodrama about women whose independence of mind remains undiminished, even as their dreams are shattered by a stifling patriarchal society.
83
Original-Cin by Liam Lacey
A stylish melodrama and feminist lament.
80
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Invisible Life is a heady blend of the casual, the sorrowful, the near-mythical, and the carnally explicit — never more so, be warned, than on Eurídice’s wedding night.
80
Variety by Guy Lodge
Anyone already familiar with Aïnouz’s work will know to expect a florid sensory experience, but even by the Brazilian’s standards, this heartbroken tale of two sisters separated for decades by familial shame and deceit is a waking dream, saturated in sound, music and color to match its depth of feeling.
80
Screen Daily by Lee Marshall
Melodrama is a neglected genre, often delivered with a post-modern twist these days. Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz proves in this stirring, heart-wrenching period film that it can be served straight up and still work a treat.
80
The Guardian by Cath Clarke
The movie is saturated with emotion and colour, though its novelistic depth brings with it the slightly effortful running time of two hours and 20 minutes.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Amil Niazi
Through a richly layered lens of myth-building and melodrama, Ainouz manages to capture the heartbreak, solitude and resilience of women on the verge.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Through a richly layered lens of myth-building and melodrama, Ainouz manages to capture the heartbreak, solitude and resilience of women on the verge.
67
The A.V. Club by Lawrence Garcia
Much of this is relentlessly bleak and hopeless—true to reality, perhaps, but also repetitious and dramatically inert.
50
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
Only rarely does Karim Aïnouz allow for loopholes to refreshingly emerge from the film’s stylistic deadlock.
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