Known for Acting
1970 something. As the end of an era of repression approaches, a bourgeois family still in its bubble of power spends its vacation in a country house. The teenage cousins spend their days in indolence, interrupted by fits of hysteria. It will only take the introduction of an outside element for violence to erupt.
The apparition of a bloodstain reaffirms the relentless cycle of life, filmed in all its fragility and complexity.
One night, a group of workers realises that the administration is stealing machines and raw materials from their own factory. As they organize to survey the equipment and block the relocation of production, they are forced to stand at their posts with no work to do, as a form of retaliation, while negotiations over general lay-offs take place. The pressure leads to a breakdown of the workers along with the world around them.
We stare at mirrors as if 'image' was a weapon of self-defense. At night, I hide in actors' dressing rooms for a working class experience. By day, I face an old theatre being razed to the ground, making way for a parking lot. Graffitis have curtains, the nose cap of an umbrella arises from a mount of sand. Oh, Happy Days! No need to stage anything! The bulldozer is a dinosaur whose teeth and gracious neck swings by a EU flag. In the boxes, we await the audience. Sometimes, nobody comes. Lost in a symbolic show of reality, I can only watch the world's end because all the endangered species perform and a reflecting labyrinth of life stories breaks through the glass of the Economic Eating Machine. Even when the sky is falling, theatre will always happen. So, choose the right place.
Laços de Sangue is a Portuguese telenovela which broadcast on SIC from September 2010 to October 2011. It is a co-production between SIC and Brazilian Rede Globo. The show also broadcast in several Latin American countries, including Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. It won the 2011 Emmy for Best Telenovela.
The Idalecio family is close to imploding emotionally. During the weekly Sunday drive all falls apart. It starts with a claustrophobic car trip through town. Nagging children, football on the radio, a mother in law with a sharp tongue, a new pregnancy. It is a day of unhappiness, a day that will turn around their lives. An anti-Sunday.
Raul Vasconcelos and Helena Brito founded a partnership over 20 years ago and has over a hundred lawyers in its service. Raul has an ego as big as the world and it was that self-assuredness that made him notorious in the courtroom. Besides being an astute lawyer, he’s a hopeless playboy who with age developed the tendency to say and do whatever he feels like. His trouble is that he’s constantly abusing that privilege. Helena is a confident woman, albeit more discreet and concerned about the firm's public perception, constantly considering how her actions might negatively affect the partnership and its bottom line. Her personality led her to take over managing the firm, taking care of all bureaucratic affairs. Other lawyers stand out in the firm, as is the case of Pedro Pimentel, who just made senior partner. He’s impeccably put together and has a smile that wins over most women, but behind this agreeable façade of his there’s a person with a lust for power and fame.
Ricardo Monteiro is a successful television producer specialising in reality shows. He is 45 years old and he has just received an award for the most popular television show of the year, when he receives an ultimatum from his 18-year-old daughter Leonor. If he does not come home that same evening to celebrate her birthday he will never see her again. Ricardo is distracted by business or other commitments and he is too late for the last flight home. When he returns next day the apartment is empty and Leonor is gone. At first Ricardo thinks that it is only a game, but there are no phone calls or messages and after a while he gets worried and starts looking for her. He discovers that she has quit school without telling him and that she has lost all contact with her old friends. She has become a complete stranger.
