Aquarius

In a provincial Brazilian town, elderly but vigorous widow Clara (Sonia Braga) refuses to sell her seaside apartment to an ambitious developer who has already cleared the rest of the building. While that holdout premise might signal the start of a heavy-handed tearjerker, filmmaker Klever Mendonça Filho's Aquarius—anchored by Braga's ferocious performance—is instead a gritty study of senior determination. The reasons behind Clara's reluctance to give up the home she shared with her husband and children are dramatized in flashbacks to her past: the apartment represents her very identity, and abandoning it would mean losing herself. Clara's resolve is challenged as the nefarious grandson—a smirking business-school grad—of the building's owner employs increasingly threatening forms of harassment to frighten her into accepting his buyout offer, becoming a symbol of the endemic corruption in Brazilian society, which is shown here to reach from private businesses to the highest levels of government. At nearly two-and-a-half hours, Aquarius is epic length, and some digressions (especially legal ones) feel unnecessary, while the resolution is more grimly satisfying than truly triumphant. Even so, Braga's performance is compellingly fearless and passionate, serving up a powerful portrait of a resolute womanin this stinging critique of corruption in contemporary Brazil. Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Kleber Mendonça Filho, three short films by Filho (56 min. total), a “making-of” featurette (18 min.), an interview with Filho and star Sonia Braga (9 min.), and deleted scenes (3 min.). Bottom line: a fine extras package for this compelling foreign film.] (F. Swietek)