Aquarius
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Talent: Sonia Braga, Maeve Jinkings, Irandhir Santos, Humberto Carrão
Release Date: 24th March
Set in the Brazilian city of Recife, Aquarius is a powerful social drama and character study focusing on the struggle between Clara (Braga), retired music critic and only remaining resident of an old apartment block, and the property developers who wish to demolish the building and replace it with a modern condominium. As time goes by, the developers resort to increasingly unsavoury measures to compel her to accept their buy-out, but Clara doggedly refuses to budge.
She is played by Sonia Braga, possibly the greatest actress the country has ever produced. Her work here is superlative: her character, a cancer survivor in her younger days, is no saint, particularly in her occasional tendency to treat her housemaid as part of the furniture, but she is a woman of principles.
Braga conveys both her strength and fragility with consummate skill, always finding the right notes. Sadly, the same can’t be said of the screenplay by director Kleber Mendonça Filho, which stumbles towards the end, though nowhere near badly enough to derail proceedings. Absorbing and thought-provoking.
Words – Felipe Deakin
