Reaching for the Moon

In 1951 New York poet Elizabeth Bishop travels to Rio de Janeiro to visit Mary, a college friend. The shy Elizabeth is overwhelmed by Brazilian sensuality. She is the antithesis to Mary’s dashing partner, architect Lota de Macedo Soares. Although frosty at first, the architect soon makes a play for Elizabeth and the poet finally succumbs to Lota’s advances. Mary is jealous, but unconventional Lota is determined to have both women at all costs. Their ménage à trois is thrown off balance when Lota starts work on her biggest project to date, designing Parque do Flamengo in Rio. Elizabeth accepts an academic teaching post in the USA and the women drift apart. Lota, at all other times brimming with self-confidence, is inconsolable. This eternal triangle plays out against the backdrop of the military coup of 1964. Bishop’s moving poems are at the core of a film which lushly illustrates a crucial phase in the life of this influential Pulitzer prize-winning poet

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  • ★★★★½ review by Dilara on Letterboxd

    i must do a triple feature of this film with the hours and a quiet passion.

  • ★★★★ review by bella on Letterboxd

    Elizabeth Bishop and Emily Dickinson would be such a power couple.

  • ★★★★½ review by Felipe Spengler on Letterboxd

    "The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster."

  • ★★★★ review by tammy💫 on Letterboxd

    do lesbians/bi women who sleep on this film deserve rights? be honest

  • ★★★★ review by rosie on Letterboxd

    the art of losing isn't hard to master;

    so many things seem filled with the intent

    to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

    lose something every day. accept the fluster

    of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

    the art of losing isn't hard to master.

    then practice losing farther, losing faster:

    places, and names, and where it was you meant

    to travel. none of these will bring disaster.

  • See all reviews

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