Genuinely good child actors are often hard to come by. Some are too ‘stage-school', too false; others recite their lines with a borderline impressive lack of emotion. In The Nature of Invisible Things, the two young cast members well and truly buck the trend.
Gloria (Laura Brandão) spends a lot of her time in the hospital, and has become a beloved mascot to the elderly patients her mother Antônia (Larissa Mauro) cares for. When Sofia (Serena) arrives at the hospital with her great-grandmother, who has had a fall and is rapidly losing her memory, Gloria is tasked with keeping her company. The two quickly become close, their friendship taking them from the hospital to Sofia's family's countryside home and through discoveries about life, themselves, and the world around them.
While the focus is firmly on the children, the relationship between the two mothers is equally engaging. Antônia and Simone (Camila Márdila), Sofia's mother, are both dealing with more difficult realities than their daughters realise. Both apparently single parents and struggling to balance work and childcare, their relationships with their children are complex but well-developed. Sofia is closer with her great-grandmother than her mother, and is frequently chastising her for how she chooses to treat the elderly woman. But small details — like the matching blue streaks in their hair — demonstrate that attempts have been made to get through this difficult stage of their relationship. Antônia and Gloria appear closer, with Gloria often speaking to her mother as a slightly irritating peer, but they still face their own tensions.
Moments of casual magical realism throughout the film are well-balanced with reality, complementing rather than distracting from the story's deeply human nature. The large pig that ‘haunts' Gloria from the opening scene provides a surprisingly emotional moment in the third act. The Nature of Invisible Things handles a lot of heavy subjects with care and, often, humour.
It's hard not to smile at the way the children approach the serious themes of the film, speaking with the certainty and confidence that only comes with youth. When Sofia explains what being trans means to Gloria after the hospital told her she was a boy and not a girl, Gloria scoffs at the ridiculous nature of the hospital's error. They laugh about it and move on; there's nothing more to it. It's refreshing and a particularly prescient reminder that hatred and discrimination are learned behaviours. Gloria's feelings towards her friend don't change, and what could be treated as a big reveal is far from revelatory.
Equally obliquely discussed is Gloria's heart transplant. She candidly tells Sofia that her heart stopped working, so they had to put another one in. Sofia, slightly alarmed by the prospect, asks if that means someone else out there doesn't have a heart anymore. The two ponder this concept of loss, of death – an unavoidable topic in the hospital, where many of Gloria's elderly friends disappear without explanation. Her own familiarity with, and daily proximity to death, begins to weigh on her as the film goes on. At one point, in an explosion of emotion, she demands to understand why she wouldn't have a fixation with what death means. The scene, shot mainly as a close-up on Mauro's face as she drives, is quietly heartbreaking. Death takes many forms in the film. A times frightening ( a body covered by a sheet in a fluorescent morgue), at others it's just a a door to another place.
What do we leave behind? Who does it belong to? The Nature of Invisible Things doesn't provide any certain conclusions, because there aren't any. Death, as characters frequently remind one another, is a part of life. It will happen. In the meantime we must embrace the complexities of living – and tell people that we love them.
The Nature of Invisible Things had its UK premiere at SXSW London on June 2.
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