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AQUARIUS (A-minus) - The veteran Sonia Braga is mesmerizing as the aging beauty who is the last holdout in an apartment complex that heartless owners are eager to convert to more valuable property. For two-and-a-half hours, she drifts through this somber, deeply nostalgic movie.

Braga plays Dona Clara, the regal denizen of a sprawling apartment in the retro complex known as Aquarius, which sits a block away from the ocean. She bonds with her housekeeper Ladjane and feuds with an old man and his grandson, the owners of the building who feed her envelopes filled with offers to sell; she rips them up unread.

This is the sophomore effort of writer-director Kleber Mendonca Filho, whose debut "Neighboring Sounds" (also about apartment dwellers) plodded and clunked. Here, again clocking in well over two hours, Filho takes a leisurely pace, but he is blessed with Braga, the femme fatale from "Kiss of the Spider Woman" 30 years ago, who is now an elegant and still vibrant 65-year-old, with a face you can't resist.

Braga carries the film effortlessly as a strong woman standing up for herself and serving as a guiding example for her adult children. Clara still brims with emotion and even lust. When the owners try to smoke her out by allowing young adults to throw wild parties directly above her place, Clara merely cranks her vinyl records but also snoops upstairs, cracking a door and keenly observing an orgy.

The film starts with an extended flashback, with Clara as a young mom, newly recovering from breast cancer, at a family gathering. The event is a 70th birthday party in 1980 for Clara's Aunt Lucia. As Lucia's grand-nieces and -nephews read tributes to her -- consisting mostly of recitations of the favorite boring pastimes of the elderly matriarch -- Lucia's mind wanders. We get a flashback from within the flashback, circling back another 40 or 50 years to when Lucia was enmeshed in a passionate love affair. The elderly Lucia looks over at a chest of drawers and loses herself in the reverie of the memory of having sex atop the piece of furniture.

That dresser ends up in Clara's apartment as we return to the modern day. Filho pauses for static shots of the dresser several times, using it as a symbol of fond memories, the ties of family, and the unquenched passions of a senior citizen who is not ready to yield to old age. One night, as the party upstairs rages, she lights up a joint and puts in a booty call to her friend's gigolo, who gets put through his paces.

In the end, when Clara discovers a particularly nefarious secret method the owners have used to smoke her out of the building, her revenge is spirited and swift. That ending feels both a little tacked on and too perfunctory, but by that time, "Aquarius" has cast its spell, and Braga has sealed a performance for the ages.

BONUS TRACKS
In the middle of the film, Clara tries to drown out the party upstairs by dropping a needle on this Queen song:



Taiguara, a singer who ran afoul of Brazilian authorities in the 1970s, handles the final scene and closing credits with "Hoje (Today)":