Can a memory of the body be recalled and triggered again by a dental trauma? That is precisely what happens to Antonio when Mara, his companion smashes his front teeth with an ashtray in the heat of an argument. Antonio’s tongue instinctively touches and investigates his raw and bleeding gum and when his saliva mixes with the blood, he remembers his childhood. He was afflicted with enormous front teeth that he was always trying to hide. He remembers a day trip to Pompei when a little boy tried almost smashed into some rocks. He remembers a beautiful and exotic mother who would come and go, someone he would always be looking for in other women. An uncle who taught him the tango.
But let’s get down to business, Antonio needs to get to a dentist rather badly so Mara recommends hers. This is a bad move because the dentist in question fancies Mara and she is not indifferent to his advances. Antonio becomes very jealous, not least because he left his wife and two children for Mara. But is this reality or hallucination? Antonio switches dentists and at every appointment he descends ever further down the slippery slope of squalor, but at the same time he has moments of lucidity while his teeth steadily deteriorate until they are deforming him. The only solution is extraction…
This is a film about a nightmare made like a horror film. It is also a psychedelic journey that finds no relief in comedy. It is the search for a male identity without the usual support of a group of friends. The film is set in Naples (although it looks like Lisbon) and features a generation of forty-somethings who are beginning to go grey but refuses to grow up unless forced to do so by the homeopathic “medicine” of pain.