The Nature of Invisible Things (Brasil and Chile, 2025)
Original title: A Natureza das Coisas Invisíveis
Director: Rafaela Camelo
Screenplay: Rafaela Camelo
Main cast: Laura Brandão, Aline Marta Maia, Larissa Mauro, Camila Márdila, Serena
Running time: 90 minutes
The relationships that emerge between girls during childhood are very particular and equally intense. Based on this, Rafaela Camelo manages to create an entire narrative that explores the particularities of deep female characters and, with a lot of Brazilianness, discusses a little about childhood and maturation in our country.
At the beginning of her summer vacation, Glória (Laura Brandão) finds herself forced to stay at the workplace of her mother Antônia (Larissa Mauro), who is a nurse. One of her patients, Francisca (Aline Marta Maia), has a granddaughter, Sofia (Serena), and the two girls end up meeting there and creating an immediate connection. Since both need to spend a lot of time in that environment until Sofia’s grandmother gets better, they get to know each other more deeply, talking and playing. And despite the strangeness of that space, a genuine friendship can be seen growing. When Francisca is discharged, they all end up going to the countryside, since Antônia offers to help Simone (Camila Márdila), Sofia’s mother.
There are so many layers present in both the text and the performances that writing any kind of synopsis becomes a difficult task. Between talking about companionship between women, aging and facing death, organ donation, and even an LGBTQIAPN+ issue, the film could become a huge mess. But, thanks to Camelo’s good script and sensitivity, everything finds a reflective balance that actually leaves the audience enchanted with the universe she created on the screen.
Among its many qualities, Laura Brandão and Serena’s performances are one of the most important elements for the film’s success. Working with young actresses is always a delicate point in productions, but both because of a fluid script and the very sincere work of both, we are transported back to the children’s universe, full of curiosities and doubts. Even though it isn’t a film aimed at children, it manages to preserve a naivety in the look that becomes touching as the events unfold.
This is followed by a very realistic art direction aligned with a cinematography that tends to create a more ethereal vision of events, as if simulating a youthful outlook on life. Even though there are some fantastic elements in the work, it’s by no means limited to that, dialoguing much more with real-world events and the relationships that are built than with the spiritual. There are also strong elements of Brazilian popular culture brought to the screen in a way that immortalizes them, which is a kindness from the cinema to small traditions that tend to be lost over time.
Through a mix of several generations of women, Rafaela Camelo manages to move us to the same extent that she makes us reflect with her first feature film. And, after some award-winning shorts, this seems to be the beginning of a long career.
