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Brazil · 2013
1h 40m
Director Fernando Coimbra
Starring Leandra Leal, Milhem Cortaz, Fabiula Nascimento, Juliano Cazarré
Genre Drama, Thriller
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When Sylvia discovers her six-year-old daughter has been picked up at school by an unknown woman, police summon her husband, Bernardo, to the station for questioning. From that point on, the film takes increasingly sinister turns as it delves into the events that led to the girl’s kidnapping. With plot twists that will keep the audience on the edge of their seats, A Wolf at the Door is a darkly disturbing journey into the extreme limits of the human capacity for obsession and revenge.
Balancing itself with an enviable self-assurance between drama, comedy, character study, and, in the last ten minutes, suspense, the film sends the audience out of the theater with a sense of shame for laughing when the narrative wanted us to.
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
It finds its strength in painting a portrait of Brazilian heterosexual gender relations as an always-volatile symbiosis between feminine hysteria and ruthless machismo.
As with so much of Brazilian cinema, the framing of the plot as a social allegory instead of a psychological portrait doesn't yield the most emotionally satisfying experience. But Wolf serves as an important feminist correction -- and a compelling reminder that predators can come from anywhere.
the pic gathers steam and displays considerable drive, even if it can’t quite shake the feel of a good TV movie.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
A Wolf at the Door is undoubtedly effective and well-crafted, but its tale of reckless obsession and its inevitably unhappy ending are finally too unsavory for its own good.
The film is mostly one long stalling tactic, indulging in unreliable flashbacks and narrative wheel-spinning to expand the details of its tragic scenario to feature-length. When it finally gets to what happened, though, prepare to cringe.
Miami Herald by Rene Rodriguez
The screenplay is fiendish, clever and airtight: Like a magician, Coimbra uses sleight-of-hand, but he never cheats, and the film is even more engaging on second viewing, when you really know what’s going on before your eyes.
Wolf relies more on surprise plot twists than the standard “ticking clock” of Hollywood thrillers. And there are stunning turns, a few that will make your jaw drop.
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Farber
This intense, painful movie lingers in the memory.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
As a piece of storytelling, A Wolf at the Door may be a tawdry little shocker. But on a visceral level, it is a knife to the gut.
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