Is this really Brazil?

<jats:p>Beto Brant’s film <jats:italic>The Trespasser</jats:italic> (2002) was considered by many critics as revelatory of Brazil’s moral decadence. This article asks: what does <jats:italic>The Trespasser</jats:italic> actually reveal about Brazil? How far can a fiction film be taken as evidence of the ethical condition of a real place? And is the country in the film really Brazil? Through an analysis of the film’s fictitious and documentary aspects, this article suggests that its revelatory quality is of an aesthetic kind: the representation of the supposedly protected universe of the ruling classes permeated by the misery that surrounds it. It argues that such an aesthetic contamination passes for an ethical diagnosis of Brazil as a whole thanks to the skill with which genre elements are articulated with the document. It concludes that <jats:italic>The Trespasser</jats:italic> updates the crime thriller by introducing music-video language as a privileged space for the representation of contemporary alienation in a global context.</jats:p>