[CRITICAL] AQUARIUS

AQUARIUS has been presented in competition at the Cannes film Festival, and Festival international du film de La Rochelle, which took place from 1st to 10th July 2016.

Dona Clara is a woman who says modestly that she is in the flower of age. His family and his friends admire his courage and strength of character. She is respected for its taste for freedom and his passion for music. The shelves of his apartment are filled with vinyl records that have accompanied it all these years. Thanks to the music of Queen or Gilberto Gil, she was able to pass the tests of her breast cancer and her widowhood. His apartment in theAQUARIUS, which is the residence of another time in front of the beach of Boa Viagem beach in Recife, is her refuge, her lair, her life.

The director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who is the third feature film after the noticed The sounds of Recife, has made the choice not to show the suffering of Clara. It is the plot after her cancer in the 80’s. He laid in the living room an old buffet passed down from generation to generation and can be found in all the moments of happiness and dance experienced by Clara. Kind of a red thread, this buffet has seen of all colors, assistant to the antics of a few characters. Dona Clara is interpreted by the actress Sonia Braga, revealed forty years ago in the title role of Dona Flor and her two husbands.

Clara has survived, and it draws its strength in the quiet saving of his apartment. His life is punctuated by swimming in the ocean, visits from his family and his friends. She recites the memories and remember his body that knew the pleasures of the flesh. Because AQUARIUS is a beautiful film about femininity. It is an ode to freedom, to life, to the solidarity of women. It is a hymn to the report uncomplicated of the body, dance and sexuality. The director poses a lucid desire is still alive of the women customers of which the body is mutilated. See laughing like teenage girls are the faithful friends of Dona Clara is a beautiful act of defiance to all those who think that this part of life is over for the seniors. Full of humanity and benevolence, AQUARIUS reconciles without taboo, the idea of sexuality with old age.

”Aquarius is a magnificent ode to life, freedom, femininity, report uncomplicated of the body, dance and sexuality.”

From the middle class of Recife, the character of Dona Clara is defined by the director by his presence, his education, and a natural class. If the film evokes the culture joyful of Brazil, it also covers the evolution of its society and the difficulty in maintaining a human relationship healthy as soon as there is a question of money. Also when the real estate project of a new Aquarius encourages all tenants to leave, Clara can only resist as it always has done. His patience will be put to the test in this building, phantom. Such as David facing Goliath, it will mobilize its energy and launch a fight against the young wolf Diego Bonfim embodied by Humberto Carrão. Sympathetic at the beginning, he gradually reveals his teeth and his game without shame.

The multiple attempts of intimidation and harassment will crescendo to bend Clara and force her to leave. The film takes its time and gives the viewer the time to get to know this woman, its qualities as its flaws. What is poignant in AQUARIUS is the capacity of resistance and resource shown by this survivor. After the rhetorical arguments required between civilised people, it will be forced to use it, too, weapons at the height of the assault. With a sense of undeniable of the dramatic effect, the director offers to AQUARIUS for a final strong and at the height of our empathy for Clara. Proof, if any were needed, of the magic of cinema, AQUARIUS gives the viewer a beautiful lesson of life and courage. By its bright image, it conveys a joy of life, embodied by a strong woman and endearing.

Sylvie-Noelle

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