Brazilian Andrucha Waddington began his career a wunderkind director of publicity and video-clips in his early 20s. By his late 20s, he'd made a fine transition to movies with his medium-length "Gêmeas" (1999, based on a short story by Nelson Rodrigues), and especially his heart-warming feature "Eu Tu Eles" (2000). These two visually striking films had powerful plots, something his third fiction movie "Casa de Areia" (House of Sand) has only a frail thread of.<br /><br />This film's pretentious, abstract, non-sequitur plot was probably inspired by the importance of Northeastern Brazil in Einstein's confirmation of his Theory of Relativity. Waddington and writer Elena Soarez seize the opportunity to tell a story about 3 generations of women, played by 2 of Brazil's finest actresses: Oscar-nominee Fernanda Montenegro ("Central Station") and her real-life daughter, Cannes winner Fernanda Torres ("Eu Sei Que Vou Te Amar"). But the plot is as thin as the fine sand of the jaw-dropping desert lunar beauty of the region of Lençóis Maranhenses in Northern Brazil, filmed as a collection of slow, grandiloquent and vacuously exhibitionist shots. "Casa..." is a visually-oriented director's dream: it's all images -- landscapes, sand, storms, clothes, water, faces, bodies...like a National Geographic documentary. The music is sparse and under-used so it won't compete with the images (Waddington opts for a Fellini-like wind-blowing soundtrack). If the premises of the script weren't so esoteric, ambitious and pseudo-metaphysical, and the direction less on the exhibitionist side (there's a completely gratuitous love scene between Torres and Seu Jorge, for example, devoid of any dramatic purpose; it's there just as an aesthetic exercise), the film might have been more likable.<br /><br />Wonderful actresses Montenegro and Torres (who's married to director Waddington) try with all their heart, but they seem embarrassingly aware that their characters are as fragile and inconsistent as the shack they built on the dunes. The rest of the cast appear in primary rough sketches of characters, with Enrique Díaz and Camila Facundes particularly contrived in their artificial roles. Waste, waste... <br /><br />You can sit through "Casa..." with the sound off and it won't make much difference -- this film was made to inspire awe for director Waddington and his excellent DP Ricardo della Rosa, who fail, however, to convey genuine emotion or maintain our interest throughout the (seemingly endless) 103 minutes. This film particularly hard to endure on a TV screen, as it fully belongs to a big one. All things considered, it's a waste of talent for everyone involved, and a letdown by writer Elena Soarez, who implodes the philosophical ambition of the story with pedestrian dialog, and director Waddington, who favors technique and aestheticism over vibrancy, passion and emotional investigation of his characters.