Three main issues are at the core of this short film: aging, family and the role of women in society.
Living more years is a consequence of the advances in medicine that has consistently increasing our life expectancy in developed societies. Nevertheless, these achievements haven’t been followed by a sufficient discussion about what happens to these elders that become increasingly more dependent in the slowly course of decades.
The family is the main support where elders can rely on. But traditional family is in crisis, either for economical reasons either for moral issues. The younger generations are not prepared to deal with this overload: taking care of their parents and children and at the same time keeping a job and a stable life.
Women turn up to be the main carers of the non-working population (children and old people). It’s upon them that lay the burden of the day-by-day tasks: food, household and all those small gestures that show their care for the others. In Christmas time that dependency on women becomes stronger, mainly through grandmothers as the core element of the family, like glue that joins all the strayed family members. Who doesn’t have the memory or a smell related to the special care that a certain home cooked meal prepared by their grandmother, mother or special person that accompanied their childhood?
A ceia torna-se, progressivamente mais opulente, gerando um ambiente cada vez mais onírico e surreal onde o bolo de Natal é capaz de resmungar enquanto é preparado e os Sonhos de Natal são feitos com as partículas que se soltam da estrela que decora a árvore de Natal.
De repente, a chegada de uma nova personagem quebra este cenário idílico e revela que, no lugar de uma refeição abundante, está um caos de pratos, talheres, utencilios de cozinha, bacalhau e ovos, geridos por uma senhora bastante idosa que aparenta estar confusa e perdidada.
A deterioração do estado mental e físico da personagem principal coloca em risco as relações e laços que unem esta família, obrigando-os a tomar decisões difíceis durante toda a ceia de Natal.
