Sônia Braga is outstanding as a woman refusing to be forced out of her Recife apartment in this powerful Brazilian satire
A performance of tremendous wit, vitality and lusty defiance by Sônia Braga drives Brazilian film-maker Kleber Mendonça Filho’s remarkable second feature. A portrait of a 65-year-old woman refusing to be bullied out of her seafront apartment by developers, Aquarius is both a powerful celebration of its independent heroine and a scathing satire on institutional corruption. Like the writer/director’s fable-inflected 2004 short Vinil Verde, it is a film fascinated by the magical power of scratchy old records, of mother-daughter bonds, of transformational living spaces. And as with his first feature, Neighbouring Sounds, it presents a community haunted by artefacts of the past and the architecture of change, social and personal conflicts seamlessly intertwined.
Retired music critic Clara (Braga) lives in the 1940s-built Aquarius apartment block in upmarket Recife.
A performance of tremendous wit, vitality and lusty defiance by Sônia Braga drives Brazilian film-maker Kleber Mendonça Filho’s remarkable second feature. A portrait of a 65-year-old woman refusing to be bullied out of her seafront apartment by developers, Aquarius is both a powerful celebration of its independent heroine and a scathing satire on institutional corruption. Like the writer/director’s fable-inflected 2004 short Vinil Verde, it is a film fascinated by the magical power of scratchy old records, of mother-daughter bonds, of transformational living spaces. And as with his first feature, Neighbouring Sounds, it presents a community haunted by artefacts of the past and the architecture of change, social and personal conflicts seamlessly intertwined.
Retired music critic Clara (Braga) lives in the 1940s-built Aquarius apartment block in upmarket Recife.
- 3/26/2017
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
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