1970. Beatriz is an 18-year-old student. She is detained by the military dictatorship in Curitiba, Brazil, and tortured for ten days accused of belonging to the subversive student movement and an armed guerrilla that fights against the regime, VAR-Palmares.
Miguel, a 7-year-old boy, lives with three generations of estranged women in an old house. Among them is his mother who, after a traumatic divorce, distances herself from the boy. Miguel takes comfort in Carmen, an enigmatic Venezuelan immigrant who works as a maid for this Brazilian family. Carmen becomes an ambiguous mother figure for the boy, who develops an intimate and unusual bond with her, introducing him to a universe in which the real and the imaginary intertwine.
Western book writer, Eugenio is going through a difficult phase. He is famous for the novels starring the Jesus Kid, but his sales have been going from bad to worse for some time. The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be a film director's invitation: he wants Eugenio to write a film script. However, to write this script, Eugênio must spend three months isolated in a luxury hotel, without being able to go out or have contact with the world he knows. Based on this premise, Mutarelli builds a scathing critique of the publishing market and the film market — where he has been circulating for years. Bringing to Eugênio much of his own personality, the author shows how the commercial part of culture can be perverse to those who work in it.