Petit mal
(O Pequeno mal)

In Sao Paulo, Janaína and João take care of each other. She has epilepsy. He is in a relationship with a man who prefers to keep his distance. Above their lives floats the vague trauma of a mudslide that may have buried men and machines alike. A work in a hotel and films watched hand in hand seem to set the tempo of their daily lives. But in the world of Lucas Camargo de Barros and Nicolas Thomé Zetune (co-directing a film for the first time), men are like plants impeded by their environment. All bodies are undermined by some secret flaw, and they do the best they can to survive in their deceptively hot surroundings. A resolutely pop film (but in its saddest expression), O Pequeno Mal sails in new waters in every shot. At times gentle and calm, at times dazzling, the films first wraps the audience into its softness to better mislead them: progressively the true depths of physical pain and the abyss of desperate heartache appear. When a serious accident strikes Janaína and João’s miraculously maintained relationship, we are reminded of the inescapable solitude that awaits all of us in the end, a solitude intensified by Barros and Zetune’s sharp frames. Life, made of elliptical vignettes, is a role play as much as a ghost show. The slightest thing is enough to see identities change and hide. If two worlds co-exist constantly, then the muffled noise of the second world strips the first one of its purity. O Pequeno Mal, just like the Smiths song that haunts João, is a cry about the outrageous frailty of our emotions and impressions: “Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me. No hope, no harm, just another false alarm.” (VP)