Director: Bruno Barreto
Year: 2013
I’m writing about this film long after I saw it, but it has stayed with me.
Reaching for the Moon was one of my early introductions to the hugely prolific and influential Barreto filmmaking family (though, made in 2013, a comparatively late work in their collective canon). I saw it at a film series hosted by Brazilian cultural organisation Instituto Rouanet, the Garden Cinema and the ICA. Bruno Barreto, son of the legendary Luiz Carlos and Lucy Barreto, directs, with Lucy and his sister Paula on production duties.
Reaching for the Moon unrolls the true story of American poet Elizabeth Bishop and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares; two starkly different women who interrupted their respective lives in the 1950s to fall in love with each other, against the backdrop of the incoming Brazilian dictatorship.
Glória Pires has a juicy role playing Soares – a warm, impatient, talented, vivacious, brutal force of nature – and brings the architect to life with all the complexity she deserved. Miranda Otto is compelling and uncomfortable to watch as the spiky, cripplingly shy and often depressed Bishop, invited to visit by her friend Mary, Soares’ partner; initially at odds with Brazil before falling for the dominant Soares along with her homeland, she is yanked into an unorthodox love triangle that will change the trajectory of her life.
(It’s also lovely to see Luciana Souza – a versatile character actress I’ve enjoyed in Ó Pai, Ó and Bacurau – pop up here in a small supporting role.)
Just as complex is the dynamic between the three women, and director Bruno Barreto affords their story the time to unpack everything that came of it, from poetry and triple parenting to heavy drinking and heartbreak, while withholding judgement about Bishop’s and Soares’ moral flexibility as their love affair sidelines the friend and lover that introduced them while keeping her in orbit. In a moving performance by Tracy Middendorf, Mary holds everything together unhappily as a second wife of sorts; initially it’s hard to understand why she stays, but Pires’ magnetic portrayal of Soares and Matthew Chapman and Julie Sayres’ thoughtful screenplay help make sense of it.
What emerges is a picture of two women whose creative work was integral to each one’s identity, while their inner lives fall out of alignment – in a tragic exchange of energy, as one develops her confidence and sense of self, the other collapses into co-dependence.
Barreto deftly unveils the central conflict between Bishop and Soares; while Bishop’s poetry and authorial confidence blossoms in the sunlight of their relationship, Soares is a confident designer already, developing her own home with unrestrained flair, designing generously for her beloved then abandoning her during moments of impatience. It speaks to Pires’ skill as an actor that she represents this complicated woman with balanced compassion and honesty, seducing us with infectious energy that enables us to later forgive her most cavalier cruelties, as the political pressures of the dictatorship strain her work and relationship.
Otto’s task is the other way around; hard to like with her initial iciness and shocking manners as a house guest, Otto gently reveals Bishop’s vulnerability and the contrast between her brittle outer shell and the woman inside, and brings us with her as she tries to make sense of the famous Brazilian spirit, exuberant even through the growing political trauma of authoritarianism. Her lapses into alcoholism are hard to watch in a character we come to care about, yet Otto unveils a growing resilience, while her paramour’s outer ebullience is built on shaky foundations as she is forced to confront realities she can’t control.
In the end Reaching for the Moon is a satisfying if sad love story, and for the gringos among us, a seductive introduction to Brazil through the apprehensive eyes of a woman who unexpectedly builds a life there. It’s a thoughtful, moving and rather lovely portrayal of the complexity and tyranny of love, pulled to pieces by external and internal flux.
