Deadly Shadows

In the early 1960's, two sisters are growing up. Faith is the elder of the two and is the apple of her father's eye – listening to all his talk of art and freedom, while younger Phoebe is given less attention. When their father dies, Faith takes it the hardest – near comatose at first but then getting into any revolution or cause that the period allows her to support. Heading off to Europe with her boyfriend, it is only a few months before her death brings even more pain to the family. Older now, Phoebe decides to use her sister's daily postcards as a guide and follow her footsteps around Europe to try and work out what happened to her.

With a quite famous cast, I decided to give this film a look but found that despite the professional sheen on it, this isn't that good a film. The plot is too unlikely, unconvincing and delivered in a phased manner that doesn't really work. Phoebe's journey is pretty unnecessary and her reasons for it didn't make a great deal of sense; it relied too much on some form of mysticism that it never earned (or kept consistent). The truth behind Faith's death unfolds but it does it in a lazy way – Wolf just keeps revealing a bit more every here and there, why he suddenly feels he has to tell things that he had secret two minutes ago is not clear but the film uses it to keep things moving. Meanwhile, in flashback, Faith's story is unconvincing – she is naïve, stupid and her political journey comes across as nothing more than the rebellion of any teenager.

It didn't help to have Diaz playing the role because she can't go beyond the character's surface and just ends up with a very basic performance that never got close to the sort of emotional turmoil that would have been needed to make a convincing Faith. Brewster is much better although it would have been a nice touch to cast two actresses that look like they could have at least come from the same family. Brewster has plenty of clunky lines to deliver but does reasonably well and she is allowed to nail Faith's character bang on the money at the end. She also has a good chemistry with Eccleston, which helps to cover up for the fact that the romance between them is a bad idea that didn't work that well. He is interesting enough though and shows he is a good actor by making more of the material than was on the page. The direction makes the most of nice European locations but it totally fails to capture a sense of time – apart from some haircuts and costumes there is very little to tell you when the film is happening and, even if you know, it never feels like the period it wants to be of.

Overall it feels interesting enough and has emotional moments and nice touches in it but generally it doesn't work because the writing is poor and cannot make the story work; like another reviewer has said, it comes across rather contrived. The performances from Brewster and Eccleston are both better than the material but Diaz is too weak considering the weight she is asked to carry.

This could have been a good movie, with some intense parts and good play. Unfortunately, it has been ruined by the script, which for all time, tricks the viewer into believing that there will be some kind of final revelation, which never happens. This is what lets the viewer down and therefore ruins the movie.

If the movie was honest from the beginning, then it could have become a very humanly intense road movie, like the kind of '70s movies by Bogdanovich or Altman. But because of the stupid cheat, it only becomes a modest and failed whodunit.

The acting and sceneries are good though. Worth a view - but only to regret how a better film it could have been.

This is a wonderfully told tale of Phoebe, an 18-year-old girl determined to find out what happened to her older, beloved sister Faith (Cameron Diaz). In 1969, Faith and her English boyfriend "Wolf" (Christopher Eccelston) set off from Faith's home in San Francisco to see Europe. Faith never returned -- she committed suicide in Portugal and the circumstances surrounding her death were, given the distance and time, cloudy. Phoebe, now an adult in 1976, uses Faith's daily postcards as her guide, and retraces the couple's travels, but not before she meets up with a now older and more mature Wolf, at his Paris home.

Camilla Bell (younger Phoebe) and Jordana Brewster (older Phoebe) could not be more beautiful and lovely.

The love affair that develops between Phoebe and Wolf is so credible and powerful, it completely entrances the viewer.

Egan's story combines cultural touchstones, political ideology, family ties and passion in this wonderful story.

Looking at the different reviews of the movie i'm shocked to find that anyone liked the movie. I'm a college age female and I hated that movie. Hate is a strong word and I barely ever use it, but it's very much appropriate for the way I feel about this movie. It was a great idea for a movie but it but it dragged and the ending was really dull. The only reason I watched the whole thing was because I had hopes for a good ending. Didn't happen.

To suggest, as a previous reviewer has done, that women are the only ones who will be able to sit through this movie is not only sexist but also false. I am a woman, and hated this film. The bottom line, whether you are male or female, is that this movie is terrible in many ways. The failure of this film can be blamed largely on Jordana Brewster. Her Phoebe is by turns annoying, cruel, selfish, ridiculous... you name it -- Brewster is almost unwatchable in her portrayal of a difficult character. I imagine an actress with more emotional sensitivity could have pulled it off and made the character a bit sympathetic, but Brewster fails entirely. From what I understand, she is studying at Yale... let's hope she's majoring in something other than drama. Cameron Diaz fares better -- unlike Brewster, she's actually acting. But her character Faith is cursed by writer/director Adam Brooks, who robs us visually and verbally of Faith's real struggle. He has the other characters inform us that Faith is upset, rather than give Diaz the chance to really portray the conflict onscreen. And so when we finally reach the point where we learn what really happened to her character, it feels like an anticlimax. Diaz tries her best, but she can't save Faith. I'm a fan of both Christopher Eccleston and Blythe Danner, and why either of them chose to appear in this movie is a mystery to me. Eccleston, like Diaz, is given little to work with -- he's reduced to a series of broody stares at Brewster and a very bad hippie wig that makes him look older, not younger. Danner, as Phoebe and Faith's mother, is limited largely by poorly written dialogue and by the fact that all of her scenes are with Brewster. Given the dramatic potential of the story, I think it could have been a better film in the hands of another writer/director, and with someone other than Brewster as the central character. As it is, Brooks has given us Brewster in an uneven, poorly-written and emotionally lacking display of moviemaking. The Invisible Circus is a waste of time.