It is a wondrous place, almost of another planet, and more than compensation for the effort to get there.

Visually dazzling, epic in its sweep and deeply romantic in its sensibility, The House of Sand is one of those films whose images and ideas linger long after the lights come on, having been burned into the viewer's consciousness.

It ends up like an impressionist painting without a subject, one we stare at longingly, waiting for its purpose to emerge.

Disregards the political shifts of Brazil's history by isolating the sprawling narrative from the rest of the nation, so that nothing can distract the director from his finicky composing