The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão

Two very different sisters from Rio de Janeiro are the subject of 2019's Brazilian winner of the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes.

One of the many prizes won by this Brazilian film was the Un Certain Regard award at the 2019 Cannes Festival and, frankly, that surprises me. It is not that Karim Aïnouz’s movie is other than well-made and well acted but, while it is a good piece of entertainment it lacks the significance that one would expect of a work that could be regarded as a likely winner at Cannes. Apparently publicity for it used the phrase ‘a tropical melodrama’ and, although I regard that as less than a wholly apt description, it is certainly the case that if this film were not subtitled it would fit readily into the world of mainstream cinema rather than into the arthouse mould.

Set mainly in the 1950s, what we have here is a tale of two sisters and their very different lives. One of them is, indeed, Eurídice (Carol Duarte) who is eighteen at the start of the story and already has hopes of making a career as a pianist. Her sister, Guida (Julia Stockler), is two years older and much less circumspect as is obvious when she abandons her life with her parents and her sister expecting to live in Greece with a sailor, Iorgis (Nikolas Antunes). His ship had docked in Rio and she had become his lover and had imagined that they would be a couple for life. Only months later Guida, disillusioned with this man, returns, but by then he has made her pregnant. Faced with this situation, her father (António Fonseca) throws Guida out of the house and, since he regards her as having shamed the family, he cuts off any real connection between the sisters. He does this by telling Guida a lie - that Eurídice has gone to Vienna to study the piano - and by concealing from Eurídice the news that her sister has come back from Greece.

The story that develops from this contrasts the fate of Eurídice who, in her sister’s absence, had succumbed to marrying the insensitive Antenor (Gregorio Divivier) with that of Guida who, once reconciled to being the mother of a young son, rebuilds her life helped by a sympathetic former prostitute, Filomena (Bárbara Santos), who becomes a second mother to her (“Family is not blood: it is love” as Guida puts it). Guida regularly writes letters to Eurídice hoping that they would eventually be seen by her and unaware that her parents are concealing them. Thus it is that for years the two sisters both live in Rio without being aware of the other’s presence in the city.

Told at epic length (140 minutes) and with the audience encouraged to identify with the situation and to hope for an eventual reunion of the sisters, The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão offers storytelling that appeals in a traditional way. Certain films by Almodóvar draw in part on the film melodramas of an earlier age, but they have a modern feel about them nevertheless. That is not really the case here despite the fact that there are explicit sex scenes which the censors would not have allowed in past decades. What certainly is of the moment is the key role given to the female characters. Duarte and Stockler give excellent performances and, while the story is a personal one centred on the sisters, the film uses its fifties setting to look at a patriarchal society and one with no concern for the fate of unmarried mothers. The men come badly out of the story and, if the father’s abandonment of Guida defines his character, Antenor’s virtual assault on his inexperienced bride on their wedding night illustrates all too well his total self-centredness.

But, if these underlying themes are present, they do not prevent the film from being an example of popular storytelling and on that level it only occasionally takes a mis-step. One such is surely the dialogue when Antenor again asserts himself with his wife. Since that occurs in the living room this time, this prompts her protest “Not on the piano!” and this seems like a camp moment in a melodrama otherwise played straight. There are also moments when the plotting feels rather contrived, but not more so than this kind of material can take. The film’s appeal is epitomised both by Benedikt Schaefer’s apt music score and by the photography of Hélène Louvart which often echoes the use of colour associated with the more romantic world of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Aïnouz show his directorial skills by largely avoiding longueurs and maintaining the length well and, while the film is hardly weighty despite its take on women’s lives, there is a bonus when in the closing scenes the splendid Fernanda Montenegro, fondly remembered for 1998’s Central Station, is memorably placed screen centre. It still has to be said that, if not entirely an old-fashioned melodrama, this film does end up as a weepie. That is why the Cannes prize surprises me, but this film does what it to set out to do very well indeed.

Original  title: A vida invisivel.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Julia Stockler, Carol Duarte, Gregório Duvivier, António Fonseca, Fernanda Montenegro, Bárbara Santos, Maria Manoella, Flávia Gusmão, Hugo Cruz, Nikolas Antunes, Luana Xavier, Andressa Cabral.

Dir Karim Aïnouz, Pro Rodrigo Teixeira, and Michael Weber, Screenplay Murilo Hauser, Inés Bortagaray and Karim Aïnouz, from the novel by Martha Batalha, Ph Hélène Louvart, Pro Des Rodrigo Martirena, Ed Helke Parplies, Music Benedikt Schiefer, Costumes Marina Franco.

RT Features/Pola Pandora Filmproduktions/Canal Brasil/The Match Factory/Sony Pictures Releasing-New Wave Films.
140 mins. Brazil/Germany/USA. 2019. Rel: 15 October 2021. Cert. 18.