Paulo Leite

Doralice is a simple minded woman romantically fascinated by marriage. However, when she is raped by a butcher, a friend advises her to become a prostitute - and she does it. After that, all her wishes and longings will curl up into a fascinating vortex.

Recently turned into a widow, Alice goes to the country to think about her life. There, she's courted by Luis Carlos but falls in love with Marta. However, Jumbo, a horse, also arouses strange and erotic feelings in her mind.

The irreverent Dulcinéa struggles to keep her revue theater, *Mambembe*, afloat; the building itself belongs to the traditional Maldonado family. The patriarch, Salvador Maldonado—a conservative man—keeps a tight rein on the clan, maintaining control over both the business and his children: Joana, an elegant and snobbish woman who is the staunchest defender of the views held by Pops, as the children call him; Téo, who has always silently submitted to the old man's high-handedness; Walter, dominated by his older sister and his father's favorite; and Lalucha, the youngest, a film student who challenges the status quo and rebels against the family's stuffy conservatism.

At the end of the 19th century, Italian immigrants settled in the municipality of Palmeira, Paraná, creating Brazil's first anarchist society, Colônia Cecília. Giovanni Rossi suffers from the failure of the experiment. He is a veterinarian, agronomist, biologist, and journalist. But above all, he is an idealist, with a strong personality and obsessed with the desire to live with free humanity.