Minimal gestures: Displacement, affect and urban experience in A hora da estrela/The Hour of the Star (Amaral, 1985)

Abstract

Regarded as a landmark in Brazilian film history, Susana Amaral’s A hora da estrela/The Hour of the Star (1985) received critical acclaim when it was released in the 1980s, and continues to receive scholarly attention, especially from feminist, ideological and sociological perspectives. This article examines the film’s use of aesthetic strategies that produce affective and sensorial experiences from a phenomenological position, rather than providing a sociological reading of the protagonist’s condition as a migrant. I argue that Amaral’s focus on the film frame and duration, which favours the close-up, mirror images and still-life images, reveals the protagonist’s minimal gestures, which give rise to affects. From a discussion of the concepts of the time-image, haptic visuality, mimesis, I contend that these embodied and affective spatial experiences construct the protagonist’s sense of self and subjectivity instead of a psychologizing portrayal of her condition as a migrant.