The Brazilian military dictatorship lasted more than 20 years, from 1964 to 1985, and withstood several waves of youthful rebellion, usually by cracking down hard on any cultural movement that threatened to get out of hand (in 1969, for example, singer-songwriters Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso were imprisoned and subsequently went into exile). By the mid 1970s it was possible for an anarchist theatre group to exist and put on subversive, gay, avant-garde cabaret shows, just so long as it stayed underground and criticism of the military remained implicit. Clecio (Irandhir Santos) is director of just such a group : The Star-Spangled Floor. But when the mild-mannered soldier Fininha (Jesuita Barbosa) is drawn into the uninhibited world of the cabaret, and gradually acknowledges his attraction to Clecio, it becomes harder and harder to keep these parallel and mutually uncomprehending spheres apart. Hilton Lacerda’s debut is both a colorful time capsule and a potent drama that has earned comparisons to the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
