Brazilian cinematography is a bottomless box of surprises, capable of offering the curiosity of the film buff or the scholar masterful films and auteurs outside the norm in different times and spheres. Likely one of its most unexpected figures is Luiz Fernando Carvalho, a sporadic creator of films for the big screen but a regular television director, particularly of telenovelas for the powerful TV Globo, such as Renascer (1993), O Rei do Gado (1996) or the TV movie Uma Mulher Vestida de Sol (1994). Caravalho not only achieved high audience figures with some of his projects, but he also propelled television language to new heights of creativity, thanks also to his penchant for adapting demanding Portuguese literary names, both classic and contemporary, such as Eça de Queirós, Machado de Assis, or Raduan Nassar. It was precisely the 1975 novel by the latter, one of the most innovative authors of 20th-century Brazilian prose, that Caravalho chose for his late debut in feature filmmaking. Nassar proposed a countercurrent reading of the prodigal son myth that finds a sensual and overflowing translation in Carvalho’s film. Set on a rural plantation and combining an epic vision with a raw, intimate portrait that explores patriarchal repression, generational conflict, and incestuous desires, Lavoura Arcaica is a torrential film, full of noise, fury, and lyricism, that overwhelms and surprises like the great films of Bressane, Rocha, Ruy Guerra, or Geraldo Sarno. GABRIEL DOMÉNECH