The sky can be, at some moments in life, the only place where we would go forever.  A place we are going to stay.  The act of going is infinite, timeless, full of sound and fury. It is leaving to search for something, which can be recognized or not, but will be always in the sky's direction. 

If you go, you will never come back unchanged. That is a talent and art of people that throw themselves, jump and bounce. Crazy people, poets, lovers are the ones we know, but there is no profile of them, at every moment their own sky is a surprise.

The sky means hope.  Perhaps there are no diamonds—just the blue color. 

The road that spreads on the screen meets the Northeastern ground broken by the sun.  However, more than the sun, there is the sky.

The sky had no surprise before the new feature film by Karim Aïnouz, Suely in the Sky (O Céu de Suely). This second feature film of Aïnouz career brings an opposite rhythm compared to his first, although it  is delicate, accurate, sincere. 

It was the only Brazilian film that participated in this year's Venice Film Festival   and it premiered in the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival 2006 (FESTRIO 2006), in which it won best film, best actress (the protagonist Hermila Guedes) and best director.

Born in Fortaleza, State of Ceara, Brazil, Karim Aïnouz, 40, is today one of the most interesting filmmakers in Brazil. Graduated in Architecture, he earned a master's degree in film history at New York University. Aïnouz was an award-winning short filmmaker when he premiered his first long feature film: the masterpiece Madame Satã, in 2002.  It is a film with the impact of a sharp-edged knife  about the life of the "malandro" from Lapa, the bohemian district of Rio de Janeiro in the 1930's, before the myth that had transformed a Northeast man named João Francisco dos Santos. 

In 2004, during his residence in Berlin as a scholarship holder of the Program of Artists of the DAAD (German Service of Academic Exchange), Aïnouz developed the first script of Suely in the Sky.  Later, the script was after co-written by Felipe Bragança and Maurício Zacharias. 

But what is that sky of Suely? The back story reveals Hermila, a Northeastern young woman who returns from São Paulo with her newborn son to her family's house, where lives with her uncle and her grandmother, in Ceara, a Northeast Brazilian State. She waits for her husband's arrival but he never comes. Alone, she searches for her life's re-creation, that is, she goes to her own sky.  

The film is dedicated to two women, mother and grandmother of the director, and coherently is a work of strong female roles—they are central, decisive to the narrative. It is essentially a history about the women.  Although the theme might be repetitive–the woman that raffles her own sex–it is not just any raffle. It is a turning point in her life. It  is a plot that does not seem original. We remember Vittorio de Sicca's short film (the script was written by the neo-realistic Cesare Zavattini), The Raffle, a chapter of Boccaccio '70 (1962), starring Sophia Loren. 

This is an approach that allows no interpretation of the characters. The film does not seek a judgment or the defense of a point of view. It is a space of an impartial exposition on which there is no side to take. However, it would be interesting to have some more episodes about the consequences of Hermila's raffling her own sex, which might focus the story more strongly on her courage and strength. 

But that seems to be a conscious choice, with the language that Aïnouz uses, to give us no argument to judge her.  He shows a narrative that brings the essence of what is really a fact, not the consequences of the character's action. We follow Hermila, she conquers us. We wish her to go and find herself, reinvent herself. That reinventing place is the theme. 

The characters use the actors' and actresses' own names. We wonder why. The cast is, purposely, composed of Northeastern unknown actors/actresses. They show up in some of their first roles, first actors and characters, in that sense. So the cast brings an originality to tell this story: the conquest of a woman, the actress and the character that meet in the same sky, not surprisingly under the same name. 

There is also the slowness, apparently provoked by the heat on the ground of the Northeastern land. Slowness of the calm, of the rhythm of those who know that there is no way to run because there is little to achieve nearby; little is what is going to be there. Therefore, there is an imperative: "to go beyond."  And Hermila goes. 

The film shows what lies before the "sky."  In Madame Satã the director also brought the main character in before the myth, a receptive look that Aïnouz tries and risks. These two first Aïnouz's feature films, with themes and rhythms almost as antitheses, do not fall into the obvious of a narrative about the "afterwards." We could even dare to say that they are works that speak about the origin of the events, denying the first and volatile appearance of things. 

In the last scene, a climax that we were longing for, there is the road that melts into the Northeastern ground broken by the sun. However, more than the sun, there is the sky.  And Hermila goes beyond. 

Suely in the Sky
Original title:O Céu de Suely
Brazil, 2006
Drama, 90 minutes

Direction:  Karim Aïnouz
Script:  Karim Aïnouz, Felipe Bragança, Maurício Zacharias
Cast: Hermila Guedes, Maria Menezes, Zezita Matos, João Miguel, Georgina Castro, Mateus Alves and Gerkson Carlos
Producers:  Walter Salles and Maurício Andrade Ramos
A VideoFilmes production.  Co-produced by Celluloid Dreams (France), ShotGun Pictures (Germany), Fado Filmes (Portugal)

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