Brazilian director Kleber Mendonca Filho has made only two features, but with his second, Aquarius—which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival to well-deserved acclaim—he achieves artistic heights common only to the masters of the medium: Jean Renoir, Yasujiro Ozu, Ingmar Bergman, Abbas Kiarostami, Richard Linklater. Like those directors, Filho has distilled the essence of what he’s trying to say into the clearest, most direct form of expression possible. Yet rather than simplify, this straightforward approach allows him to explore existence in all its complexity, with images as layered as they are concise. His premise serves as a jumping-off point for profound and moving explorations of memory and identity.
Aquarius follows Clara (Sonia Braga), a widow and retired music critic who is the last holdout in an apartment building marked for destruction. The real estate developers who have plans for the building make Clara a generous offer, but she doesn’t want to move—the memories and totems that comprise her life are inextricably linked to the place in which she lives, and to her these intangible things are worth far more than any material goods or cash that she can exchange them for. (She’s also, to be fair, a little on the stubborn side.) As the movie progresses Clara digs in her heels, and everyone around her—not just the development company but members of her own family and ex-neighbors whose own fortunes are being held up by her recalcitrance—steadily increases the pressure on her to sell.
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