TOC: Transtornada Obsessiva Compulsiva

The first full-length film from young Brasilian directors Paulinho Caruso and Teodoro Poppovic makes you laugh and shake your head, often at the same time. Inarguably there are a lot of stupid jokes, but also a great deal of depth. 　　The main character is Kika (a great performance by Tatá Werneck), a well-known, but not yet that well-known star of soap operas and TV commercials, who came to São Paulo in order to get confirmation of her new role in an Armageddon-style soap opera and to present her new book. 　　Only a few hours before the presentation Kika learns from her manager that she has written a book...Well, the show must go on and she starts giving interviews on a book she has not written, nor even read. 　　The cryptic message from the author of the book sends Kika on a quest that plunges her into an ill-timed existential crisis and changes her life unrecognisably. 　　A fast-paced and colourful film that takes us behind the scenes of the world of modern show business and gives a dead-on and poignant description of the sexism and absurd thirst for glory that accompanies it, but there’s also a nagging feeling of emptiness when you seem to have everything and you’re still not happy. Bursts of laughter and emotional moments alternate with headspinning speed. Action, humour, romance and flying scrotums, fragments from gladiator dreams – this story has everything. The whole film is like one big tightrope walk and it has to be said to the credit of Paulinho Caruso, Teodoro Poppovic and also Tatá Werneck that all those strange and maybe not so strange pieces fit well together.