The Three Marias

This strikingly unusual movie is at once an old-fashioned melodrama, a boldly stylized spectacle, and a very grim fairy tale, acted and directed with originality and flair.

Fresh and offbeat tale of vendetta.

Abranches intends for a religious parable by way of Greek tragedy, but the film drowns in a morass of portentous signs and poetic symbols.

He's (director Abranches) so focused on creating a strikingly mannerist visual style that he forgets to flesh out his plot and characters.

The film has all the pregnant pauses, exaggerated reaction shots and melodramatic scoring of an overripe telenovela, but, unlike a good soap opera, the sisters' separate story lines are clumsily balanced.

A series of third-act complications provides much-needed narrative surprise, but until then, The Three Marias is a disappointingly flavorless genre exercise.

The leaden pacing, somnambulant performances and incessant symbolism in nearly every shot will soon have you thinking that The Three Marias is three too many.