VAST EMOTIONS AND IMPERFECT THOUGHTS

From best-selling novelist and screenwriter Fonseca (Bufo and Spallanzani, 1990, etc.) comes this campy, racy little thriller conjoining murder, smuggled jewels, an unknown novel by Isaac Babel, and a Brazilian filmmaker who’s reeling at his wife’s recent suicide. The filmmaker, flush with the success of his last film, is a man much in demand: A German producer wants him in Berlin to shoot one of Babel’s war stories; his unctuous evangelist brother wants him to polish the promo video that will launch the brother’s political career; and his lover wants him back in the sack, even though he still feels guilty about his wife (he started his affair after an accident left her a cripple). Then, when a random act of kindness to a woman later found dead leaves him holding her cache of precious stones, he’s wanted by a lot of other even less savory characters. To get away from the noose tightening around him, he goes to Berlin, where the producer tantalizes him with a story of the ma