‘Isabel’ review: Brazilian star Marina Person gives a winning performance as an ambitious São Paulo sommelier

Dir: Gabe Klinger. Brazil/France. 2026. 85mins

Tracking the struggles of a free-spirited São Paulo sommelier who tries to set up her own wine bar after leaving her restaurant job, Gabe Klinger’s feature debut has charms that include its clever blending of earthiness with romance and a winning central performance from Marina Person – well-known in Brazil as a TV presenter, actress and director (her best-known film internationally is 2015’s California). Person’s presence should help Isabel satisfy domestic palates, but such home-grown fare may struggle to travel beyond its Berlin Panorama debut.

Person’s presence should help Isabel satisfy domestic palates

Isabel (Person) lives with her French boyfriend Fred (Gregory Chastang) and is a sommelier at a two-Michelin-star restaurant run by Tommaso (Marat Descartes), where younger Nico (Caio Horowicz) also works. A true oenophile and lover of the kind of Brazilian natural wines that the restaurant used to sell, Isabel has become disenchanted by the crowd-pleasing bottles that the restaurant now focuses on, and dreams of setting up her own wine bar. The hard-nosed businessman Tommaso – the only clear-cut antagonist in a film populated almost exclusively with relatable, agreeable characters – disagrees. The wine cellar is therefore full of bottles that will never be sold, which Isabel begins quietly taking home with her.

Gringo investor Pat (John Ortiz) shows up at the restaurant: when he asks her for a wine recommendation, she in turn asks him what kind of music he listens to, and his answer – “punk” – awakens hope in Isabel’s rebellious heart. She embarks on a strategic campaign of seduction, but soon things take a turn for the worse: Pat’s investment in her bar comes to nothing, and Fred heads back to France long-term to look after his sick mother. But it’s too late for Isabel to turn back. She leaves the restaurant and goes ahead with setting up her bar, only to run into financial trouble. To make matters worse, Nico – unaware that there is no investment money – also gives up the restaurant and joins her.

Isabel is at its best in a couple of early scenes, letting the camera roll as real-life sommeliers passionately debate their craft around a table. These feel like the documentaries on which Klinger cut his teeth. On the downside, some sequences feel awkwardly paced – among them the interactions between Isabel and the young American Meredith (Michelle Ellyse), who has set up a craft shop in São Paulo, and feels somewhat surplus to the film’s requirements.

This is Person’s movie (she co-scripted with Klinger), and she gives it everything she’s got in her fundamentally sympathetic role as a beleaguered woman determined to have a shot at living life on her own terms. Whether we’re watching Isabel heaving a refrigerator that’s bigger than she is through the streets of São Paulo, sitting weary-faced and broken on an underground train, or getting drunk with Nico, to whom she’s both mother and friend, we’re with her all the way. Even if it’s implausible that someone who’s worked for years in the wine business, and at a Michelin restaurant to boot, could be so naive about the commercial realities.

In a film whose politics are gentle and human-driven rather than explicit, scenes set in the São Paulo neighbourhood where Isabel lives, and where she wants to open her bar, provide a useful insight into gentrification and the erosion of local production and commerce by big corporations. 

The score mixes well-selected soul ballads such as Etta James’ ‘At Last’ with Umberto Smerilli’s original work, which is pretty enough but sometimes leans towards the sentimental. Thankfully this is not an accusation that could be levelled at Isabel as a whole, with the script always keeping a careful eye on emotional truth.