A vida invisível de Eurídice Gusmão

Karim Aïnouz has always had a passion for Rio de Janeiro. His debut MADAME SATÃ was a masterful rendition of the city’s underbelly in the 1930s, through the eyes of a charming, yet ruthless transgender performer. This time, with A VIDA INVISÍVEL, an adaptation of a novel by Brazilian writer Martha Batalha and homage to Brazilian melodramas, Aïnouz captures the city in the 1950s. It is a story of two sisters, the 18-year-old Eurídice, a prodigious pianist, and the 20-yearold Guida, a rebellious dreamer who falls in love with a foreign sailor and risks her father’s wrath to experience passion in a new country.
A socially strict working-class family with Portuguese roots plus Rio’s cultural vibrancy form the backdrop to this forlorn tale of two women who sense life’s possibilities vanishing. Aïnouz pours his love for his mother and grandmother’s generation into this story and mines it for humor and intimacy, with the help of maverick French cinematographer Hélène Louvart. She keeps the palette muted and bathes the images in blue and mauve tones, making even the most familiar domestic spaces seem eerie. The attentiveness with which the women protagonists scrutinize their appearance is ravishing and tender – as if they were seeking the ambitions and hopes they’ve been denied in their own reflections. (Ela Bittencourt)