Keswick Film Club - Aquarius

Synopsis

Imagine you have been living in the same place for most of your adult life, in a beautiful spot with beautiful views (this should be pretty easy for us in Keswick!). Your life has been wrapped up, not just in the place, but in the building itself. Along comes a developer who sees a chance to make a fortune by knocking down your home and building a newer, flashier apartment block. He offers you lots of money to move; what would you do?

Well, everyone in Clara's beachside block in Recife has agreed to sell... but she wants to stay. A retired music critic, she loves it here and has no need of the money. The developer, and even her friends and family think she is mad and try to persuade her to move...

The film is not about a 'David and Goliath' fight over the flat though. It "turns out to be less about the twists and turns of Clara's story and more about the confounding experience of aging, the mind-body conundrum, and how the physical environment becomes such a potent signifier of time, memory and meaning" - Ann Hornaday, Washington Post. "...besides being a study of a woman under duress, the film is a portrait of a society where many traditional values, like its buildings, are at risk of being annihilated simply for the sake of modernity and money" - Geoff Andrew, Time Out.

The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and it is Sonya Braga (made famous by her role in 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' back in 1985) who gets much credit for this: her "evident strength, intelligence and vitality are essential to the character of the embattled but stubborn Clara" - Geoff Andrew again.