At the North American premiere of “The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão” at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz explained his aesthetic desire for the film. He needed the film not be shot in High Definition. For him and his cinematographer, Hélène Louvart, it was important that the images of the film, although shot digitally, would retain the mystery and ambiguity of old lenses evoking a time gone by. From the opening scene of the film, it’s easy to see why. To watch Aïnouz’s film is to be transported to an ornate and heady dreamscape. The sensual nature of the tableaus overwhelms in keeping with the billing of the film, which announces itself as “a tropical melodrama by Karim Aïnouz”. For Aïnouz, the film is a chance to shine a light on the invisible women of Brazil’s history and so it evokes that idea of something shrouded in obfuscation. “The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão” shares interests with a number of films this year at TIFF – the focus on marginalised women, the examinations of class-conflict and the limits and bounds of family.
From the opening shots of the thick rainforest meeting a steep coastline of rocks, the film seems intent on telegraphing to us the duality of things – beautiful but dangerous, tough but malleable, together but apart. The film’s prelude of an opening foreshadows the separation that will come to define the story. Two sisters, 18-year-old Eurídice and 20-year-old Guida, are temporarily separated while out one afternoon. They are soon reunited but trouble is imminent. The opening sequences of the film are key as Carol Duarte and Julia Stockler must evoke a depth of feeling in Eurídice and Guida’s relationship. The film’s canvas depends on believing the rapport between these two different women. Guida is sensual and iridescent, while Eurídice is artistic and opaque, but they’re bond is true. When Guida elopes to Greece with a sailor, the distance cannot sever this bond, and so the film thrusts us headfirst into catastrophe. Their father disowns Guida when she returns to Brazil pregnant and alone, and she is ignorant of the fact that Eurídice is married and living nearby so what follows is an emotional saga as both sisters live lives apart, thinking of the other, but unable to reach out – physically separated by their father, but instinctually connected to each other.
Two women living lives apart promises a difficult dramatic arc to manifest on film, but Aïnouz is as interested in depicting the separation of these sisters as much as he is interested in shining a light on the invisible women of the patriarchal and conservative1950s Brazil. The film would be evocative just tracing one sister, but moving between Eurídice and Guida the film overwhelms us with the struggle of being a woman in an uncaring world. Entrapment is the thematic and aesthetic principle that defines their lives. Guida, trapped with a young son, is taken in by a former prostitute. Eurídice, meanwhile, has little time to tend to her musical talents as she is trapped in a marriage with unappealing buffoon, who is unable to discern the nuanced perspective of the woman he has married. And, so, Louvart and Aïnouz shoot these women as trapped. A sex scene that goes on long enough to cause discomfort traps Eurídice between a senselessly thrusting man and an unappealing couch. Guida in labour is trapped between the barren hospital room and the helpful but unempathetic doctors. “I should have locked you in a room and thrown away the key,” their father says to one of the sisters early on. What he does not realise is that to be a woman is already to be trapped in a room with no key.
Still, these women persist and their persistence colours the film with a hope that feels both misplaced and necessary. Aïnouz effectively creates a heartrending narrative, like the best of melodramas, bringing us to the edges of our emotional capacity. But, the film is astonishingly well-modulated for all the emotions laid bare. Aïnouz understands feelings, he understands the way that expressionism overwhelms the palettes and necessitates vignettes to telegraph mood that are based on serendipity and chance. “The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão” is saturated in colour, sometimes it hurts us to look at an image too long. It’s central to the idea of melodrama, stirring emotions that we are not sure we can manage to sustain. The sense of loss and despair saturates the milieu so that Aïnouz presents a sobering indictment of what it means to be a woman in a man’s world. So the film leans into the feminine. A pair of earrings torn between the pair act as visual symbols, women’s bodies are vessels of hope as well as despair and the way Aïnouz tenderly embraces Duarte’s face as she plays the piano with wild abandon in a key scene spins out of control. There’s something quietly revolutionary in the wild abandon of emotion on display here. Aïnouz chooses to wield sentiment and feeling, openness and emotion in a defiant declaration of the value of a culture and a sex that have been dismissed because of that same sentimentality.
Midway through the film, one of the sisters says, “I discovered what it means to be a woman alone in this world.” And when you are alone, it is not cerebral fantasies that you cling to but emotions laid bare, hazily and dreamily remembered. “The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão” feels like a memory, mysterious and ambiguous, cloudy and potent and florid. It envelopes you completely and at the end, it’s hard to shake it from your memory.
