Insolação: Subjective Perception of an Urban Utopia Through the Lens of Love and Loss

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the extent to which spaces and the built environment visually translate the characters’ intimate feelings in Insolação/ Sunstroke (Daniela Thomas and Felipe Hirsch‚ 2009). Although set in Brasília, the film chooses to conceal spaces that would make the city recognizable, with its monuments and public landmarks, opting instead to depict barren landscapes and empty urban places that intensify feelings of detachment and displacement. The chapter thus contends that the film’s architectural space serves as a catalyst for the empty encounters between different groups of characters, whose stories and paths cross in the narrative.

I believe that the Canaletto’s and Piranesi’s of our time are the directors, the people of the cinema: they describe the modern city, its centre and its outskirts. […] The outskirts of Pasolini’s Rome or of Antonioni’s Milan, were discovered first in the cinema, rather than by architects.

(Rossi 7–8)