Além da Ilusão

I watched the whole film and still have no idea what it's about. It's beautifully shot, but the story is unintelligible.

15 minutes into the movie I started to feel unsettled, then I brightened up a bit when I realised I was watching a masterpiece of bad cinema. The story was bizarre and incoherent, the direction was laughable (I did actually laugh at several points), and the editing was performed by a psychopath on speed.

Natalie Portman struggled bravely through, but Depp was out-acted by the houseplants. The only good decision the director made was giving her as little to do as possible.

This movie could rival 'The Room', achieving cult status because it is so bad. I can honestly say this was the worst movie I've seen in my 60 years on the planet. Even the titles were bad - they were in a font so tiny as to be unreadable. I'm guessing the actors bribed the title guy so that nobody would see their names. I've given it one star for wardrobe, and because I feel sorry for Portman.

Two American sisters, Laura and Kate Barlow (Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Deep) tour some theaters in Europe shortly before World War II with a spiritualism number, as one of them is a medium. When they are seen in Paris by André Korben, a film producer (Emmanuel Salinger), he becomes enthusiastic about them and proposes a project to them.

Plantarium is one of those films that contains interesting approaches (even intriguing and perverse) and several good ideas but that do not manage to integrate satisfactorily and that end up disintegrating, partly due to their nature, due to an ambiguity that is no longer effective and above all because of its cinematographic realization.

We know that a planetarium is a device that projects an illusory sky onto a vault. One of the themes of Rebecca Zlotowski's film is the crossroads between reality and fiction through cinematography (reminiscent of some stories by Horacio Quiroga on the subject) and a reality that in this case is ambiguous and that also seeks the help of parapsychology and the dream. As for the title in Spanish (Connection of love) it alludes to one of the perverse aspects of the plot (perhaps the most original) that remains halfway. And all this in a climate of the time that wants to be emerging but without achieving it at all.

Planetarium offers a very good performance by Emmnuel Salinger and as usual in these productions, a beautiful art design.

Tuned in because of Portman & Depp, but soon saw that there was no real depth to the story. History is always useful...

Very interesting characters. The pre WWII event. About two orphan sisters trying to make a living. The best they came up with is to help the people to make contact with their loved ones who had died. So far so successful. Especially when a notable filmmaker takes interest on them, their lives begin to change. Those were what shown to us in the rest of the film. But there comes a complication, especially the bond between the sisters was tested, and followed by the filmmaker's reputation.

There were many English dialogues. The casting was so good. The lead three was great. But there's something about the story. Overall, it looked decent, but I don't know that they cinematically well transformed. Looks like a literature kind of tale, yet it was not adapted from any such source. That is what's missing in here. You know, the good writer's perspective. They know how to take the story in a right direction.

I felt they messed the conclusion. All the sudden too much had happened. Even the twist did not feel like it was a twist. All the above, there's no strong emotional effect. The middle section was so plain. All I felt was the two sisters struggle. The rest did not make the film shine. Could be one time watchable, but I'm not sure you would like it at the end.

5/10