Once Upon a Time Veronica

Veronica (Hermila Guedes) has just finished med school in Recife and is facing the gap between the theory of books and the harsh reality of Brazil’s public health system: enormous lines, unhelpful colleagues, and disgruntled patients who refuse medical protocol and sometimes even spit in her face. She refers to herself in the third person, as “patient Veronica,” and exerts self-pity for feeling alienated in spite of having it all on paper. When she’s not being a doctor, or a patient of her own self in her journals, she’s hanging out with her ailing father, having lukewarm sex with her boyfriend, or daydreaming about beach orgies.