Brainstorm

A film set in Brazil. Neto is twenty. He is interested in music, hangs about with friends, and is on bad terms with his father. One day his father finds cannabis in his room. There is a fight. The man puts his son in the car and drives him somewhere; Neto does not know where they are going. The door is locked behind him. This is a psychiatric hospital. He is registered, his clothes are taken, his hair is cut, and he is put on a ward. From there the film takes place inside the institution. The medication queue, electroshock, wire fencing, a yard and an empty day. Neto is not an addict. But he is there now and nobody questions it. The patients look at each other. Some have been there for years, some because their families brought them, some for no reason at all. An escape is attempted and the consequences are heavy. What the narrative is interested in is not illness but confinement: the film shows that once the system takes a person in it genuinely makes him ill. The father is not a monster. He believes he is saving his son, and the film gives his ignorance not as wickedness but as the common condition of the period. The visual language is hard. Handheld camera, light tending to yellow, close shots, and almost no exteriors. The source is a book of testimony. Austregésilo Carrano Bueno wrote about his own time in hospital and the film comes from that text. Rodrigo Santoro's first major leading role came with this film. Rodrigo Santoro, Othon Bastos and Cássia Kis are in the cast. Laís Bodanzky directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes hard drama that indicts an institution. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot take scenes of electroshock and restraint; the film shows them at length and directly.