"Nada é Por Acaso" ("Nothing is by Chance") gives us a complex tangled web while intertwining the lives of two women who stories seem unrelated to one another yet they are connected, not only just the area they live but also in another plan, another time. The film, an adaptation from Zíbia Gasparetto's novel is a very dramatic and hopeful experience about the higher forces that connects us through the many difficult tests life gives us and that moral and ethical choices defines us who we are in this earthly plan and another ones (for those who believe it). It's a story told from the Spiritism doctrine perspective, so there's an audience for those themes but there's also people who simply don't care about it. I tend to enjoy those films because it allows me to think outside of the box, to question and reflect on existencial things and the matters of life and death.

I'll try to be brief with the story exposition and I need this. The life paths of a young talented lawyer and a wealthy woman are crossed yet they hardly know how they'll affect or help each other in time. The lawyer Marina (Giovanna Lancellotti) succeed it in life with a lot of hard work and dedication, but she hides a shameful secret from her past that revolves how she succeed it as well. On the other end, the happily married Maria Eugênia (Mika Guluzian) is all eyes for baby and her loving husband (Tiago Luz), but when an one-night stand guy (Fernando Alves Pinto) reappears in her life threatning to expose their affair to the husband things take a dramatic and desperate turn. To tie up them all is Rafael Villard (Rafael Cardoso), a young psychiatrist who treats Maria's husband (also a man with some secrets in his marriage), and through the forces of the universe, he meets Marina and a love relationship begins with some problems along the way.

It's pretty much like a spider-web of a story that if done in a telenovela it'd be 200 chapters long with countless characters and a long awaited connection to be formed. The big secret from Marina is actually told from the get-go with some very mysterious scenes, but don't be fooled into thinking you've solved everything because those characters have a lot of stuff to share and conceal. And seeing how everything develops is all very thrilling and marvelous to watch.

And I just mentioned that kind of TV genre since director Márcio Trigo comes from a solid TV background and he makes here his film debut with a story that has some dramatic touches from a telenovela. Nothing that affects his job neither from the actors, which are all pretty good either as loving characters and as repulsive ones as in the case of the French blackmailer.

My points of contention over the film comes from a propagandist scene where one of the characters get a book recommended by a known Brazilian figure in the doctrine. Besides a certain controversy he was involved in 2022, I think the filmmakers could have Kardec's name and teachings, plain and simple. Surely, the film goes about his propositions about spiritual life, reincarnation and more but having that particular contemporary author felt as marketing. Second point in fact is the sudden reveal that Marina's younger brother becomes a medium and writes psychographic letters. I had to research a little about it, and while it's said that one can train for those, in the film it shows him as being hit by a force that makes him write everything, he has attacks of that. Anyway, it's out of my depth and I know someone can prove me wrong and even say those things can happen.

For its message of love, redemption, forgiveness to others and one self and attention to what we do to ourselves and others, I find it here an impressive emotional film that shows that our lives can be a little more than just our routines of survivalism, and there are great lessons to be learned from here and beyond. 8/10.