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The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao Movie Review

The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao is a 2019 Brazilian historical drama film directed by Karim Ainouz. It’s an effective and emotional, but mostly repetitive film.

In Rio de Janeiro during the 1950s, two sisters struggle against repression and bigotry during a particularly patriarchal era. I was intrigued by this premise, and in particular I found the concept of two sisters being separated for a period of time powerful, and that truly is the best part of the film. The film also showcases just what a horrible time the 50s were for women in Brazil, and how quickly they could lose their homes and their parents.

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However, the main problem with this theme is how on-the-nose its treatment was. The movie would have benefited from a more subtle approach as unfortunately the approach here is anything but. You as a viewer continually are hit on the head with the feminist overtones and the female suffering which, though important and it should have been portrayed, felt very poorly calculated here.

The film consists of miserable scenes of suffering throughout, and it simply needed some lighter scene to relieve you of all that tragedy. Naturally, many of these scenes are excellent, in particular the father disowning his daughter is effective, and all the sex scenes worked as they were quite raw and real, but many other scenes were just piling of the misery for these characters, and that could quickly get tiresome.

The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao benefits from excellent performances from its actresses, both delivering splendid work, and I liked both characters and their relationship as well. I also liked some of Ainouz’s direction, but most of it felt not as polished or as confident.

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The film also features terrific cinematography with a particularly interesting color palette to it. It looks good throughout, and some of it was quite cinematic and memorable. The emotion is also definitely felt, especially in some terrific scenes, but unfortunately the repetitive nature to it robbed it of its momentum along with its overly long runtime.

The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao is very well shot, well-acted and often undeniably moving. Many of its scenes are certainly quite powerful and the storyline is overall very strong. However, the film’s treatment of its central theme is pretty unsubtle, and the obviously repetitive nature to it along with an overlong runtime robbed it of its momentum unfortunately.