SIBLING REVELRY
Invisible Life a lovely tale of two sisters and their many unfulfilled dreams
Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Invisible Life tells a simple, almost elemental story of two sisters separated by chance and circumstance.
We meet 18-year-old Euridice (Carol Duarte) and her older sister Guida (Julia Stockler) in 1950s Rio, being raised by middle-class, conservative parents. When Guida runs off to Greece with her boyfriend, only to return pregnant and single, her father throws her out and disowns her. Euridice, meanwhile, is married off to Antenor.
He’s not the most evil husband in moviedom, but he’s no great catch, either — selfish in the bedroom and unsupportive of Euridice’s dreams of becoming a concert pianist.
The best thing the sisters have is each other, but even that is not to be.
Although they both settle in Rio, their parents tell Euridice that her sister never came back from Greece, while they inform Guida that her sister is off studying classical music in Vienna. Letters from one to the other go to their parents’ house, but are never passed along.
The screenplay, adapted from a 2016 novel by Martha Batalha, creates some parallels in the sisters’ lives without overplaying the coincidence. Each has a child she doesn’t especially want but grows to love. Each is waylaid by a patriarchal system, as when Guida tries to obtain a passport to visit Vienna, but can’t get one for her infant son because it requires a signature from the father.
And each has problems with men who don’t value their feelings. “I’m tired of being someone else’s fun,” says Guida’s friend and substitute sister, the resolutely single Filomena. “I want to be my own fun.”
The movie flags a little in the long middle of its two hour and 19 minutes, which are meant to include some nail-biting sequences of will-the-sistersever-find-each-other-again? But director Karim Ainouz brings things around with a third-act twist just plausible enough to believe, and a final segment set decades later
And the film shows real sympathy for its characters. Without vilifying the men (they were just born into the same broken system, after all), it puts the lives of its female protagonists at the forefront for all to see. “At first it hurts but you’ll get used to it,” is a line delivered to each sister, once when discussing sex and the other on the topic of breastfeeding.
What’s more, Invisible Life includes one of the simplest, saddest lines in a movie this year: “Things didn’t go as I’d dreamt.” cknight@postmedia.com twitter.com/chrisknightfilm