"Amarar" unfolds its narrative into three very distinctive sets: an apartment, a beach and alleys of a sea city. In each one of them, according to director Emanuel Mendes, there had to have three different colors: aseptic-white in the apart; yellow-orange at the beach; hot-red in
the city where the two characters meet. Following Mendes's instructions, cinematographer Maurício Franco used different filters to create the ambients, and there was later rework on telecine and on the light correction. Although there were no references to constructing these
sequences, director Emanuel Mendes admits influences from Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jean Vigo, Marcel Carné, and Lars von Trier.
The script was written four hands by director Emanuel Mendes and his collaborator André Campos Mesquita, based on an original idea: an image of a young woman lost on a deserted beach with a giant cracked mirror by her side.
Among the locations used in the film are the historical downtown area near the harbor in the city of Santos, downtown São Paulo, and the Guaratuba beach, north of the state. Shooting took one weekend.
Bruna da Mata had never acted in film before: the producers chose her in a "cast crisis" once the original girl could not star in the movie. Ricardo Coutinho, the electric engineer, was the one who actually suggested her, since Bruna was the cousin of some of his relatives, and her description matched perfectly the one the filmmakers wanted. He simply asked her if she would like to be in a movie, and she very naturally replied that, yes, she was interested. After shooting her scenes, Bruna distributed autographs.
As it happens with every creating process, "Amarar's" first draft of the original screenplay contained only the main character, the young woman, at the deserted beach, together with the giant mirror. Six different scenarios were written in a six-month period until Mendes and Mesquita reached a satisfactory version. In the meantime, the mysterious man, the child and the adult woman were inserted in the story. Still during the filming, the script was modified, and even in the editing process there were alterations in the story.