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The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao
A moving, sumptuous tale of two sisters cruelly separated by family and fate in 1950s Rio.
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Overview
While Eurídice hopes to escape strait-laced 1950s Rio through piano studies in Vienna, Guida’s bid for freedom is to elope to Athens with her lover. Things don’t work out as planned for either sister – not that they’re aware of each other’s progress, since the letters they write to one another over the years go unanswered…
Centred on a bitterly ironic twist of fate that keeps the siblings apart, Karim Aïnouz’s wonderfully sympathetic portrait of two very different women is also a searing study of a profoundly patriarchal society where dreams are routinely dashed and freedoms denied. Hélène Louvart’s striking cinematography and the sensitive use of music eloquently evokes the sisters’ energies and emotions, while the performances are superb throughout. A present-day coda involving the veteran actress Fernanda Montenegro brings all that has gone before into sharp emotional focus, recalling Walter Salles's more recent I'm Still Here - unsurprising, as the two films share a screenwriter, Murilo Hauser.
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