Two movies compete for all times in “Isabel,” and their lack of synthesis creates a fuzzy psychological have an effect on acquainted to anybody who ever underestimated their alcohol tolerance. In striving to be each a personality examine of a dissatisfied sommelier and a picaresque story of ambition in São Paulo’s gentrified districts, director Gabe Klinger fails to land the emotional actuality of his eponymous lead character, Isabel (the movie‘s co-writer and Brazilian polymath, Marina Individual).
While you title a movie after a personality (say “Laura”, “Gilda”, “Gloria”) you gotta make her your middle of gravity. But, as this movie unfolds, it turns into more and more unmoored from Isabel which, like a domino impact of two, makes the social features really feel loudly nameless, like a lot wine-bar white noise.
This failure to launch betrays a promising first act, which units up a doubtlessly compelling story of — to counter “Marty Supreme” — dreaming small. We meet Isabel in a state of fabric consolation and inventive stagnation. She has a house, a companion, a neighborhood, and a great job as a sommelier in a Michelin-starred restaurant. What she lacks is the liberty to precise her ardour for pure wines in her place of job. Though she has painstakingly cast connections with native producers, their punk-rock wines develop dusty within the cellar whereas her conservative boss prescribes a gentle food regimen of pop hits for the menu.
This music analogy comes into play throughout a dialog with an American punter. Isabel is cautious as she responds to a request to go to the desk of businessman-of-the-world Pat (John Ortiz). Her weary familiarity conveys that “asking to talk to the sommelier” is an everyday flex from patrons who fancy themselves a reduce above the same old diner. The restaurant setting is glossy, small and vibeless; a spot the place style means refined manners. On this personality-free context, Pat is ready to promote himself as a personality, buying and selling off of his former life as a line prepare dinner and asking Isabel the query she needs to be requested: which wine she actually recommends. She asks what music he likes and when he solutions, she is aware of what to pour.
Director of pictures Flora Dias creates intimate frames, increase scenes from close-ups of faces and arms, and discovering the non-public sensuality of characters whereas they carry out respectability in public locations. Within the preliminary assembly between Isabel and Pat, this intimacy feels borderline intrusive in a way that fits the scene. Though she is the skilled, the shopper is all the time proper, so he holds her captive, particularly as soon as he sees what will get her going.
One factor results in one other and shortly Isabel is indulging Pat’s sense of cultural superiority by displaying him her spots. What he has over her is that he simply would possibly bankroll her escape plan of opening a wine bar. Their relationship is ambiguous and all too fucking relatable to anybody whose goals are contingent on a greenlight from a moneyman. (The filmmaking comparability is correct there.) This stretch of “Isabel” is its excessive watermark, as Klinger lets their dynamic merely unfold with none sort of signposting. The distinction between the breezy floor and the actual that means is subtly performed. In preparation for her assignations with Pat at places within the metropolis agreeable to him, Isabel pays cautious consideration to her private type and costume. After they drink wine collectively, to her it’s an audition and to him… we don’t know. It could possibly be foreplay, it could possibly be enjoyable, it could possibly be the start of a partnership. The stakes usually are not equal; her dream of a future could possibly be a meaningless flirtation to him.
Our understanding of what all of this implies to Isabel is expressed by means of her relationship with the actual man of her life, Nico (Caio Horowicz) her BFF and a waiter on the chichi restaurant the place she works. Much less a totally realized character and extra of a useful confessional machine, Nico is a weird creation who signifies the bounds of Klinger’s skills as a director.
A number of many years youthful than Isabel, he’s loyal to her for causes that the movie doesn’t explicate. Isabel’s companion is shunted off on a world journey leaving Isabel to her personal units. She befriends a scorching younger scorching American girl (mannequin Michel Ellyse) and hangs out with Nico quite a bit. Klinger is making a special movie along with his gaze than the one he’s plotting out. By no means thoughts opening a wine bar, the digital camera is in thrall to the youthful great thing about Horowicz and Ellyse and the marginally older great thing about Individual. We go off observe right here and there’s no means again. There may be nonetheless a narrative to get by means of. Isabel rented an area, for gawd’s sake, however at this level, the movie stops caring whether or not it succeeds or fails. Who cares about that after we can watch her hanging out at dwelling in her charming inexperienced kimono?
“Received’t somebody consider the pure wine lovers of São Paulo” is a slight provocation on which to mount a characteristic movie, but cinema is a broad sufficient church to accommodate all tales. Alexander Payne’s “Sideways” proved that wine could be a means into an individual. The misstep on this framing of a Individual is that Klinger doesn’t take her severely sufficient. He’s neither coolly and critically indifferent from Isabel’s low-stakes ambitions, nor warmly wedded to the company of her needs. The digital camera is glued to her and her associates with out empathy or curiosity. “Isabel” units up a selected individual’s world solely to inform the viewers “she’ll be nice, both means.”
Klinger neither judges nor pertains to Isabel. As a substitute, he objectifies her with out ever folding his explicit perspective into his story. This creates a jarring impact as the importance of her busy endeavours is sublimated by the perverted impulse to guage her bodily kind. Loads of male filmmakers have efficiently aligned themselves with the every day tribulations of ladies — good day to the Dardenne brothers and Éric Rohmer, amongst others. What they’ve that this movie lacks is an curiosity in feminine interiority. Isabel provides her identify to this movie, however Isabel dissolves on the tongue.
Grade: C
“Isabel” premiered on the 2026 Berlin Movie Competition. It’s presently searching for U.S. distribution.
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