“Nothingisguaranteed to us. Playthings of the luck that has fallen to us, we laugh to cheat despair or see the laughter to which we are entitled fill with tears. Our life is then a sad comedy, where we die laughing so hard. And love is only allowed in improbable things. It is the flower of evil that comes our way. Balm or poison?
This is how one could characterize the narrator’s life story, which is told differently in the novel and in the screenplay he is writing for the cinema. It is the unnerving story of journalist Gabriel Rocha, an incorrigible womanizer, suddenly touched by the fright of homosexual attraction and by the refusal of the guessed old age that comes in the first wrinkles and in the mirrors.
But also the life of each of the characters he summons up. The gay Portuguese-Dutch actor who joins Gabriel and Clara and is far from being the withered apex of the love triangle. The widow who, at her husband’s wake, falls into the poet’s arms and never leaves. The kitchen helper who has a thing for scars. The restaurant owner who recruits station girls on Facebook. The filmmaker who sees in the clichés of laughter and tears the best in our human imperfection. The homophobic writer who, it turns out, can’t do without a meat on a spit dinner in a gay bar. The lover who talks horizontally about the issues and problems of the protagonist’s life. The cook who is bullied by a group of children.
And other characters who, with those indicated, share the search for the happiness of imperfect things. They won’tall be saved by laughter.”
Last modified: 4 de February, 2022
