*serious spoilers ahead*
A middle-class man in his early thirties falls in love with a poor shoeshine boy. He adopts the boy and fights his desire for him, all the while feeling guilty for it, and suffering the anger and suspicion coming from his neglected rich fiancée and his pretty mistress. The boy, who appears to be in his mid-teens and has an androgynous appearance, is revealed to be really a girl and a little older than he looks.
Thematically close to Death in Venice, it explores the quandary of a man in an impossible emotional situation. Rather than taking the nightmarish labyrinth in which it puts its protagonist to its ultimate consequences, the film chooses to defuse the aporia by a last-minute plot switch (actually, attentive spectators will see it coming earlier through various plot details -- the cramps of which the boy complains, the bleeding in the bathrom, and the fact that he claims to not know his real age). A side issue which the film explores is social inequality in Brazil, though the choice of an actress with European features and soft skin to play a migrant from the poor Brazilian Northeast makes it somewhat less convincing. The film is rather lazily scripted, and some of the notions in it are intriguing, e.g. a selection for a directorship at the protagonist's company is decided through a car race where the drivers of the competing cars are their respective engine designers. The catchy musical theme ("Passion Love Theme") was released in a double-compact record and was a great hit in Brazil.
Rating: 31
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