Synopsis
Clara (38) has been increasingly successfully writing and illustrating books for children. A book lover, she cares about small bookshops as places to exchange ideas.
Last year she was chosen to be awarded the most important children literature prize.
This has stressed her because of the new time requirements and activities conspiring against her drawing routines. To balance the new situation, the family decides to move to a house in the countryside, to be able to fully enjoy the time resting available. She is marries to Francisco (42), her lawyer and protector, and they have two children, Violeta (14) and Lisandro (11). Violeta is a teenager girl discovering the changes in her body. Lisandro, for some strange reason, barely eats.
After receiving the award in Brazil, the house will be ready for enjoyment. They chose to move to a suburb close to the place where Clara was raised, a neighborhood she left many years ago when her family moved to the downtown of the city. While having received the prize has disturbed her life, maybe more than what she expected, she believes that life in her new dream house will bring her peace.
Shortly after settling down she meets again a former boyfriend, who is now a botcher. She is vegetarian, since long ago. Ariel (39), invites her to dinner and to meet his mother, whom she remembers as a godmother, and brother Carlos, who is now a priest at the Benavidez village church, where he also runs a soup chitchen for poor children. This poses a world very different to Clara’s, but somehow resembling the warmness she lived during her childhood.
Clara is then immersed into a process where she searches for new sources of inspiration and a change of perception about who she is now, who she has been, and nature revealed in a new way. She explores flirting with this former boyfriend, more as a play than expecting a result. Without clearly understanding why, she can’t avoid vising the soup kitchen handled by Carlos and trying to help. Her initial approach creates conflict when she suggests the kids should draw anywhere and in any way, to convey them to creativity. The front wall of the church results covered by wild strokes; she feels guilty but does not know how to repair this.
However, the painted wall becomes a bridge towards a meeting point with Carlos and the kids. Unexpectedly to her former mindset, Clara discovers what will be her next piece of work: a book composed with parts of the wall painting, and, among them, a drawing of a sort of elf tuning trees with his flute. Clara’s kids join the party, something new starts to happen.
Drawing and sharing the drawing turn into engagement, an act in common. But, Clara’s husband is not sharing or understanding these changes in her, her personal journey. Their relationship will have to overcome this turbulence, if this is possible.