Sônia Braga is outstanding as a woman refusing to be forced out of her Recife apartment in this powerful Brazilian satireA performance of tremendous wit, vitality and lusty defiance by Sônia Braga drives Brazilian film-maker Kleber Mendonça Filho´s remarkable second feature. A portrait of a 65-year-old woman refusing to be bullied out of her seafront apartment by developers, Aquarius is both a powerful celebration of its independent heroine and a scathing satire on institutional corruption. Like the writer/director´s fable-inflected 2004 short Vinil Verde, it is a film fascinated by the magical power of scratchy old records, of mother-daughter bonds, of transformational living spaces. And as with his first feature, Neighbouring Sounds, it presents a community haunted by artefacts of the past and the architecture of change, social and personal conflicts seamlessly intertwined.Retired music critic Clara (Braga) lives in the 1940s-built Aquarius apartment block in upmarket Recife. The beach lifeguards are affectionately reverential towards local VIP `Dona Clara`, while a newspaper interviewer notes her old-school love of `physical media` - of vinyl albums that contain a `message in a bottle`. But Clara´s days of happiness are under threat from developers, led by selfie-snapping Diego (Humberto Carrão), who is intent on tearing down the past and building a `new Aquarius` where the old one `used to exist` (`The building exists now,` Clara tells Diego. `You´re leaning on it!`). Soon she is the only tenant left in a ghost building, prey to the developers´ covert harassment - from orgiastic parties in the apartment above to shit in the stairwells, bonfires in the car park and worse. Like her home, Clara is under siege from a new generation of entrepreneurial termites, lending an edge of horror to the drama, a tangible sense of creeping dread.The camera stays as close as a devoted lover, captivated by Braga´s miraculously expressive face Related: Sônia Braga: `The Oscars ...
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