Can an otherwise healthy married survive a catastrophe, or are the circumstances that rule our lives more important than what we are made of? In Gustavo Sani’s Olhos Invisíveis (Invisible Eyes) asks its audience to question the stability of our own character and those of our closest intimates by showing the aftereffects of calamity. The film follows a married couple, André and Sophia, after a horrible car accident has disfigured her and rendered him blind. The two are unable to connect and disgusted with each other. Sophia is depressed and often unable to get out of bed, and when she does, she seems to take pleasure in torturing her blind husband. She throws extra salt in his food right in front of his face and lets his pet bird escape. Because he caused the accident, André appears to take this abuse as a kind of penance for his failure to protect his wife from harm. André is performing a different kind of torture on Sophia though, and the film raises the question of who is actually failing to reconcile themselves with the tragedy.
In Olhos Invisíveis, the dialogue is well written and subtle; the characters manage to seethe hatred and distress convincingly. When Sophia over salts his food, she uses it an excuse to insult his mother and question his manhood. He refusal to engage with her, which seems apologetic and beleaguered, is also a kind of torture in itself, a repudiation of her anger and pain. The film’s milieu underscores these themes of power and pain. Its tendency toward chiaroscuro lighting paints a metaphor of dark anger and reasoned light.
While there are some challenges with the filmmaking (in particular there are moments in which the cinematography and editing aren’t seamless), the film’s final images work very well and are in fact some of the past visuals of the film. The clear references to Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Rear Window speak to a tradition of manipulative cinematic relationships. Couples, it seems, are only able to barely keep the monsters at bay and be able to love each other harmoniously; with the slightest whiff of crisis, the house collapses.