José Maria, a modest civil servant, retires. A lonely, lifelong bachelor, he gradually realizes that neither the present nor the future has anything to offer him. All he has left is the past. So he decides to travel to Pouso Triste, in the interior of Minas Gerais, the small town where he was born and grew up into his teens. In truth, José Maria travels into the past, in search of lost time, seeking his first and only love, Duília, a lovely 15-year-old girl he had left behind in that faraway town when he moved to Rio de Janeiro with his parents, and who, on the night they said goodbye, had let him catch a glimpse of her breasts. In Pouso Triste, the traveler will discover reality. That sweet image no longer exists; the woman he finds is merely an old lady, a ghost of Duília, lost forever. All that is left for him is to flee, to weep, to surrender to old age.

The film won the Governor of the State of Guanabara Award for Best Film of the Year, First Prize at the Fourth Centennial Film Awards, and the Governor of the State of São Paulo Award for Best Actor for Rodolfo Mayer, as well as a Special Honorable Mention at the Teresópolis Film Festival.