"Women in Brazilian Film: The new agents in (late) modernity"

Abstract

I would like to start my paper by calling your attention to a statement by Daniella Thomas regarding the protagonists of the films Terra Estrangeira (1995) and O Primeiro Dia (1998) which she co-directed with Walter Salles. Referring to the female protagonists of both films and the actress Fernanda Torres playing them, Thomas says the following:

“[Elas] são personagens que sofrem o filme. Nenhuma delas “é a personagem que pega o filme. É a que sofre o filme. O filme vem, atravessa a vida dela, transforma a vida dela de uma forma definitiva. Agora, não é ela que carrega o filme do começo ao fim”. Fernanda, nos dois filmes, “faz personagens que sofrem, que são carregadas pelo filme.”

In my view, Daniella Thomas’s words are quite illustrative of what I would call a certain indecision regarding the depiction of female agency in much of the Brazilian Retomada cinema and what other critics, like Miranda Shaw, characterize as “the critical neglect of women in Retomada cinema.” Most particularly in a great deal of the productions of the first decade of this cinema boom, women seem to transmit a certain dependency on their male counterparts which diminishes their autonomy as subjects, even when they play a central role in stories and events. We only have to think of films such as Um Céu de Estrelas (1996), Estação Central (1998), Terra Estrangeira (1995) and O primeiro Dia (1998) to acknowledge this indecision and dependency. Not to mention other cases, such as the by now worldwide famous or rather infamous Cidade de Deus and the Tropa de Elite saga, where women are barely present. This ‘lack’ seems, however, to be quite different in, at least, a few films that were produced from 2004 onwards, as it is the case of O Céu de Suely (2006); Antônia (2006), Verônica (2008), Sonhos Roubados (2009), or Como Esquecer (2010). In these productions, not only do women play the central roles but show an agency and empowerment that enable them to overcome the obstacles life and society confronts them with.

In my paper, I intend to take a brief look at the role (young) women play in two of the above mentioned films, namely Antonia (2006) by Tatá Amaral and Sonhos Roubados (2009) by Sandra Werneck, and particularly at the way they deal with their underprivileged situation in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. As I hope do demonstrate, these young women are able to overcome cultural, social and sexual discrimination by using ways and methods that, though not always socially, culturally or morally totally accepted, allow them nevertheless to pursue their dreams and construct their destinies. By doing it, they engage in a new form of female agency that subverts old engendered dichotomies to propose new social, cultural, sexual, and moral realities.