Confessions of an Invisible Girl Parent Guide

Shy and awkward, Tete (Klara Castanho) never seems to get it right. She has a unibrow, a mustache, and she sweats more than the average 15-year-old girl. She struggles with relating to other people and can’t make friends. With a family move to Rio de Janeiro, Tete sees her new high school as a fresh start. Maybe here she can make some friends - or even find a boyfriend.

At a whopping 91 minutes this is the longest film I have ever seen in my entire life. Just kidding, but it sure does feel like it. I had to pause the movie about halfway through and take a break; that’s how painfully uncomfortable and boring this movie is. I feel like my entire day was taken up just trying to get through this slog. If it wasn’t my job to finish it, I would have turned it off after 10 minutes at the most.

Let’s start with our protagonist, Tete. Yes, she’s shy and awkward, but she’s also obnoxious and gets in everyone’s face. The writers want us to believe that people don’t like Tete because of her looks or her perspiration problem, but for the most part people don’t like her because she’s annoying and self-centered. In fact, there’s hardly a likeable character to be found anywhere. The only vaguely likeable character is Davi (Gabriel Lima), but that’s because he has no personality or defined characteristics, so he blends into the wallpaper before we have a chance to hate him. Tete’s family bully her mercilessly over her looks and lack of a social life to the point where I started Googling the number for Rio’s child protective services. Tete’s grandmother (Rosane Gofman) is especially cruel, calling her granddaughter ugly right to her face multiple times, and she never learns a lesson. At no point does this horrible family apologize or change. No wonder Tete is struggling - she’s being emotionally abused at home.

Also, one of Tete’s eventual love interests, who, spoiler alert, she gets together with in the end, is Davi’s older brother, Dudu (Caio Cabral), who is a college student. Let me rephrase that: a fifteen-year-old girl is preyed upon by an adult man and it is portrayed as romantic. That alone would be reason enough for me to dislike this movie, but luckily, they added in all the bad writing, cringy acting, and lack of a clear message so I could hate it even more!

There’s a shoehorned in message in the last five minutes about accepting yourself and not feeling like you have to change for other people. Which is great, except the entire movie up to that point revolved around Tete changing herself to fit in, which is successful. So, really there is no clear message of theme outside of “bullying is bad but only if you get called out for it”.

As far as content concerns go, it’s a fairly clean production, aside from the verbal bullying. There’s a bit of kissing and a few swear words, but for a teen flick that’s barely worth noting. However, content issues are pretty much irrelevant, because this movie is a steaming pile of garbage, and no human being should be subjected to it. I now have an intense desire to go take a long hot shower to try to wash the memories away. Wish me luck.