Kleber Mendonça Filho's second feature stars Sonia Braga as a well-off woman in her 60s, fighting to hold on to an apartment that has been in her family for decades.
"Clara (Braga), a 65-year-old widow and retired music critic, was born into a wealthy and traditional family in Recife, Brazil. She is the last resident of the Aquarius, an original two-story building, built in the 1940s, in the upper-class, seaside Avenida Boa Viagem, Recife. All the neighbouring apartments have already been acquired by a company which has other plans for that plot. Clara has pledged to only leave her place upon her death, and will engage in a cold war of sorts with the company, a confrontation which is both mysterious, frightening and nerve wracking. This tension both disturbs Clara and gives her that edge on her daily routine. It also gets her thinking about her loved ones, her past and her future." (Cannes Film Festival)
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97%112 reviews
The David vs Goliath battle at the centre of Aquarius cries out for a politically-impassioned work of righteous indignation. But Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film, controversially excluded from its home country Brazil’s submissions to the 2016 Academy Awards, tempers its anti-capitalist rage and bitter class-conscious narrative with a fittingly languid reflection on the temporal soulfulness of physical space and objects.
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A character study as well as a shrewd meditation on the needless transience of place and the way physical space elides with our identity.
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A marvelous and surprising act of portraiture, a long, unhurried encounter with a single, complicated person.
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Compelling story which boasts both a jaw-dropping twist and a satisfying denouement.
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A film with an almost Proustian understanding of how a favorite song - or, for that matter, a sacred space or a cherished piece of furniture - can become a repository of personal meaning.
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Sonia Braga shines in this rather classic portrait of a woman who won't let go.
Full reviewAquarius is available to stream in New Zealand now on Academy On Demand.
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