A credible portrait of an era, and draws in its tensions and conflicts with quite some power.
The Invisible Circus (2001)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:60
Fresh:13
Rotten:47
Average Rating:4.1/10
Consensus: Despite Jordana Brewster's strong performance, The Invisible Circus lacks the necessary dramatic tension to be interesting. Also, the cultural and political contexts of the period are barely explored.
Synopsis: In THE INVISIBLE CIRCUS, sixties idealism meets headlong with family conflict and, mysteriously, death. This compelling drama, based on Jennifer Egan's novel, begins in the infamous Summer of '69,... In THE INVISIBLE CIRCUS, sixties idealism meets headlong with family conflict and, mysteriously, death. This compelling drama, based on Jennifer Egan's novel, begins in the infamous Summer of '69, when radical hippie Faith O'Connor (Cameron Diaz), and her English boyfriend Wolf (Christopher Eccleston) take off for Europe, feeling that they will change the world for the positive. Faith diligently writes postcards to her younger sister Phoebe (Jordana Brewster). When they suddenly stop, the next Faith's family hears of her is that her body has been found at the bottom of a cliff outside a tiny Portuguese fishing village, the victim of an apparent suicide. Seven years later, Phoebe, a haunted, introverted teenager, still doesn't believe her adventurous, life-loving sister would have taken her own life so, against the wishes of her protective mother (Blythe Danner), Phoebe decides to retrace Faith's journey across Europe, using the postcards she had received from Faith as her only clues to a growing mystery. From a houseboat in Amsterdam to a flat in Paris, Phoebe follows Faith's footsteps right to the end. Along the way, she finds Wolf married and settled into a life of bourgeois complacency, one of the many twists in this chilling, engaging story. [More]
Starring: Jordana Brewster, Christopher Eccleston, Cameron Diaz, Patrick Bergin
Starring: Jordana Brewster, Christopher Eccleston, Cameron Diaz, Patrick Bergin, Camilla Belle, Blythe Danner
Director: Adam Brooks
Director: Adam Brooks
Screenwriter: Adam Brooks
Composer: Nick Laird-Clowes
Studio: New Line Cinema
Reviews for The Invisible Circus
A soul-satisfying film about one young woman's rite of initiation into adulthood.
Though the script is remarkably faithful to Jennifer Egan's novel, it relies too heavily on voice-over to move the plot along, preferring to baldly inform the audience of developments than letting us figure them out for ourselves.
The Invisible Circus feels less like a drug trip and more like the annoying side effects on the morning after.
Strangely dispassionate and uncommitted for a movie about passionate commitment.
A movie for people who are so sensitive they barely notice the feelings of others or what's going on in the world.
Although well cast and acted, the movie doesn't amount to much. Still, it is an enjoyable enough diversion.
The slow pace, lack of tension ... and increasingly preposterous developments will have many viewers seeing through this film long before it draws to a slow and laborious close.
Part beautifully shot European travelogue and part moving exploration of the darker side of the hippie era's rabid idealism.
The film is overnarrated and in spots overwritten, but Brooks ... does well with actors, and he has coaxed an extraordinary performance out of the young Jordana Brewster.
The Invisible Circus embraces many of the themes of these and other films, but, as adrift as its two sister heroines, refuses to settle upon what it is really about.
For whatever reason, Brooks has decided to distance his characters from the audience, and the result is a cold, uninvolving experience.
The Invisible Circus has its heart in the right place, but its hippie-dippie, flower-power motif never really goes anywhere or say anything new.
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