For certain film lovers, April is all about Lucrecia Martel. The Argentine director’s first feature in almost a decade, Zama, continues at the Gene Siskel Film Center for another few days, and her acclaimed “Salta Trilogy” begins on Friday with The Headless Woman. We celebrate the return of one of contemporary cinema’s great filmmakers by taking a look back at five other women directors who made a mark on Latin American cinema: Margot Benacerraf (Venezuela), Sara Gómez (Cuba), María Luisa Bemberg (Argentina), Suzana Amaral (Brazil), and Maria Novaro (Mexico).
Hour of the StarBrazilian filmmaker Suzana Amaral’s acclaimed debut feature (1985), about a slovenly young secretary, 19 years old and still unhappily a virgin, searching for romance and fulfillment among the marginal employables of Sao Paulo. The story is almost too precious, with harsh urban reality grinding provincial innocence to dust, though to her credit Amaral eventually moves beyond dreary third-world stereotypes to meet underdevelopment on something like equal terms. Her (literally) unwashed heroine isn’t always miserable (only sometimes) and resists the ideological obligation to be nobly oppressed: she entertains regressive fantasies of movie stardom, consults fortune tellers, and acquires a bizarre education by listening to the radio and watching TV soaps (she tries to impress her boyfriend with her knowledge of houseflies, but he just tunes her out). None of this is especially fresh, though it does open out in formally arresting ways, and Amaral’s clean, precisely structured images (remarkably controlled for a first-time director) show that she’s learned her Akerman lessons well. With Marcelia Cartaxo, Jose Dumont, and Tamara Taxman; based on a novel by Clarice Lispector. 96 min. —Pat Graham
