Elizabeth Bishop was a private poet. In the span of her career she wrote only 101 perfectly constructed poems, and for over 26 years she didn’t read her poems in public. She lived openly as a lesbian, considered herself a feminist, but wanted nothing to do with the women’s movement. Lota de Macedo Soares was a very public artist, who is probably best known for her design of Rio de Janeiro’s largest public park and recreation area. The Brazilian film REACHING FOR THE MOON is less interested in architecture and verse as it is in the queer love triangle between Lota, Bishop, and Lota’s lover Mary. In 1951 Bishop travels to South America for a holiday and plans on spending a weekend in Brazil with her old college friend Mary, who lives together with Lota. Initially the Lota and Bishop clash. The latter finds Lota’s forward manner off-putting, but soon the two fall passionately in love. To pacify this uneasy love triangle, Lota’s buys Mary a child and organises her love life on her estate like she would a recreation area: her ultra-modern house in the middle, left of the hill lives the introverted and often intoxicated poet, and to the right down in the valley the family house with Mary and their adopted child. In Brazil, thanks to Lota, Bishop enters a prolific creative period. What Bishop means to Lota first becomes clear when their relationship enters a deep crisis after Lota’s connections to the driving forces of the impending military coup in 1964 is revealed. What REACHING FOR THE MOON has to say about literature is not even worth mentioning, but what makes the film unique is its representation of a creative and powerful relationship between two female artists.
Tom Dorow

Tom Dorow (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Carla MacDougall