Portugal, color, 120′ (1989)
Lisbon, 1989: A middle-aged poor devil lives in a room in a cheap family boarding house, in the old section of the city by the river. Tormented by illness various adversiies, the idiot, who feeds on Schubert and maybe on a vague militancy to cinema as a form of resistence to misery, is kicked out on his ass, following a frustratred attempt against the virtuousness of the landlady’s daugther.
Alone, deprived of any resources, he is confronted by the harshness of the city and is interned in an asylum, from which he will emerge upon his considered decision as a free man, to fulfill a «rich and strange» mission, pointed out by an old friend, a mental patient like himself: «Go, and make them sweat! »
… And between ourselves, laughing always, so he has done…
(Press Office – Dossier)