User Reviews

More explorative than explanatory, this documentary has amazing archive and footage research about a very little documented issue: fakirism (nail bed, long time hunger challenges, self-flagellation with blades, live crucifixion...), snake dance, and extreme arts in general in Brazil (even circus female wrestling appears once). The author moves from a character to another, telling her or his story in an expressionist way, without taking too much time in each of them. Through the varied storytelling, two elements are recurrent: 1) the way artists attract not only curiousity and admiration but also incomprehention and prejudice (being considered as prostitutes is something that happens quite often), and 2) mysoginy in various levels and traits, from overemphasizing female artists' phisical attractiveness to open violence: beating, offending, murdering. This later issue clearly mobilized the filmmaker, leading to the movie's bizarre end.