Concerns of adolescence: from the dome of Casa Grande to the plunge into the present time of the city

Abstract

This article is an in-depth analysis of Casa Grande, a film by Felipe Barbosa (2014). It is a study focused on the thematic motive “the past in the present” as a central component in the development of the film’s plot. The notion “thematic motive” refers to each unit of the thematic range of a narrative as identified by its analysis (Tomachevski, 1970). The film plot is concentrated in the story of a teenager over-protected by his rich family that keeps alive a code of behavior proper to the patriarchal paradigms of powerful Brazilian rural families in the past. An acute and unexpected crisis comes to his father economic affairs obliging him to cut expenses and dismiss the professional driver that used to take his sun to school. Jean, the teenager, starts going to high school by bus and starts to face the big city as it is lived by those who interact with distinct social classes and has to face new challenges. The new experiences give him opportunities to learn how to find his way in a contemporary society. By dealing with those challenges, he plunges into a process of ripening, in particular on what concerns his sexual anxiety.