Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

É proibido fumar (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes)
D: Anna Muylaert, BR 2009, 86 min, English subtitles

Baby, a chain-smoking guitar teacher, yearns for a relationship. She senses a chance to escape her loneliness when the musician Max moves into the apartment next door. Little does she know that she is about to get entangled in a passionate ménage à trois, characterized by jealousy and bitter disputes. “É Proibido Fumar“ walks a tightrope between comedy and tragedy, telling a tale of love, sex, suffering and death, and of the impossibility of giving up smoking….. Just like in real life, the characters emerge not without scars but as better people in the long term.

Anna Muylaert (* 1964 in São Paulo), director and screenplay writer, produced her first feature film in 2001. “Durval Discos“, which was shown at numerous international festivals, is a slapstick-style comedy about the owner of an “old-fashioned” vinyl record shop. Her second feature film “É Proibido Fumar“ (Smoke gets in your Eyes, 2009) received eight awards at the Brasilia Film Festival.