Sonia Braga, Aquarius

It has been 40 years since Sonia Braga stepped upon the world stage with Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, a sexy Brazilian fantasy that led to an international career (Kiss of the Spider Woman, Marvel’s current TV series Nick Cage) which now peaks with an extraordinary character study in Kleber Mindanca Filho’s Aquarius. Braga’s Clara is erotic and independent: a widow, mother, cancer survivor and, as her daughter tells her, “an old woman and a child.” It is a tour de force that might only be matched in its go for broke candor by another indestructible, France’s Isabelle Huppert.

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