1971: Semana de 22 (The Week of 1922). 1972: Cole?ao de marfil (Ivory Collection). 1980: Projeto pensamiento e linguajen (A Project for Thought and Speech) (short). 1981: S?o Paolo de todos nos (Our S?o Paolo). 1985: A Hora da Estr?la (The Hour of the Star) (+ co-scenarist/scriptwriter).
1996: O Regresso do Homem Que N?o Gostava de Sair de Casa (Costa e Silva) (role).
Decided she wanted to pursue a career after 12 years of marriage and motherhood; early 1970s?worked as a public television station news reporter; mid-1970s?began working on television documentaries, eventually making 50 one-hour films examining various social issues; 1980s?worked in television after living in New York for three years; 1985?directed her first feature, The Hour of the Star.
Best Film, Havana Film Festival, Best Film, Brasilia Film Festival, Best Director, International Woman?s Film Festival, for The Hour of the Star,
S?o Paolo, Brazil, 1933.
Attended film schools at the University of S?o Paolo and New York University; attended acting and directing classes at New York?s Actors Studio.
Married to a physician and divorced, nine children.
The clich? ?better late than never? perfectly describes the career of Suzana Amaral. She had been married to a physician for 12 years and had eight of her nine children when she decided that she also wanted an education, and a vocation. She enrolled at the University of S?o
The Hour of the Star not only is Amaral?s first feature, but it is her lone feature to date. Notwithstanding, it is one of the top Brazilian films of the 1980s: a neorealist slice-of-life, set in S?o Paolo, which records the plight and fate of Macabea, a thoroughly ordinary, virginal 19 year old. Macabea is employed as a typist, even though she barely can type and is oblivious to her inadequacies. She is an orphan who is all alone in the world and new to the city; she is a baiano, a northeastern Brazilian who migrates south.
Macabea is plain-looking and slow-witted, unhygienic and uncouth. She always is apologizing, even when there is nothing for which to be sorry. At one point, she declares, ?I?m not much of a person.? Her favorite off-hours activity is riding the S?o Paolo subway, which she describes as ?nice.? In her own way, she is as disconnected from the world around her as Travis Bickle, Martin Scorsese?s Taxi Driver.
Macabea may have romantic fantasies (which involve her staring longingly at a wedding dress-garbed mannequin in a store window and dreaming of becoming a movie star) and sexual longings (which she fulfills via masturbation), but she is socially and sexually inept. She only can envy a bitchy, voluptuous co-worker, who brags about all her boyfriends and abortions. At one point, Macabea thinks two men are admiring her. The first is a transit cop, who tells her that she is standing beyond a subway station safety line. The second reveals himself to be blind.
For a good portion of The Hour of the Star, Macabea dates the pretentious and self-involved Olimpico, who sports his own delusions of grandeur. It remains a mystery why he agrees to see her beyond their first meeting, and their relationship (which is devoid of romance or sex) consists of her asking him the meanings of words and spouting factoids she has heard on the radio. When he finally breaks off with her, he does so by pronouncing, ?You?re a hair in my soup.? At the finale, a fortune-teller reports to Macabea that her life will change. Her now ex-boyfriend will want to marry her. Her boss will not fire her. A wealthy foreigner, a ?gringo,? will give her lots of money, as well as love her and marry her. The scenario segues into fantasy as Macabea purchases a sunny blue-and-white polka-dot dress. But the ?gringo? hits her with his car, leaving her a bloody corpse. He gets out of the car, and runs toward her. Then, magically, she comes alive, and runs toward him. . . .
Amaral paints a fully developed portrait of Macabea, whose thickheadedness ordinarily might make her easy to dismiss. Yet as her hopes and fantasies are visualized, Macabea becomes a three-dimensional character whose shallowness makes her sympathetic. The Hour of the Star works as a chronicle of the manner in which lack of money and knowledge may cause a person to feel (and, in many ways, be) less-than-human, and a reminder that even those who are unattractive and none-too-bright are individuals, with their very own feelings and longings. And in more political terms, it is a vivid depiction of disenfranchisement of the poor in a modern industrial society.
The Hour of the Star was an impressive first film for Amaral. Unfortunately, it apparently will be her lone directorial credit. Given her age, and the time that has passed since its release, it is highly unlikely that she will be adding additional credits to her filmography.?