Reaching for the Moon (2013)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

A gentle movie about relationships between three women. (Yes, I say three women as Mary lived with Bishop and Lota until the latter die.) And as every human relationship it is permeated with high, low and ... drama moments. When it comes to women it seems that directors never forget the drama. Blend together alcoholism, passion, money and drama and you have a genuine, feasible film, if based on true events.It feels that the characters lack in depth a little bit, but in this movie that was a good thing to me since the movie did not intend to replicate accurately the events (hence it is not possible to truly know what happened) . Therefore, t is up to the viewer to infer the finest nuances of those people based on the most general outlines shown in the film.It is a film to be savored and reflected as the years pass by within the plot.

Lovely. A story here that is not overshadowed by the relationships, politics, or agenda. It is, simply beautifully filmed, the beaches of Rio De Janeiro, the beautiful home Lota has deigned in part to accommodate her new lover, poet Elizabeth Bishop, completely played by Miranda Otto.Otto is at once restrained yet yearning, a Vassar graduate visiting her friend, who initially is puzzled (and indeed overwhelmed) by the beauty and passion of South America.She plays the American New England spinster type well, without a stereotype here. We can feel she wants, and NEEDS to break free from societal restraints.The filming of the rain forests, the owls at night, the visuals are incredible. Lota Soares was politically connected and designed the park near Carioca beach, the title infers, reaching for the moon has so may more connotations for each woman.What is most refreshing is the way this film is written, sensitive to the issues each woman experiences, it is an individual and a private journey.The actress portraying Carlotta Soares is affecting and sad, and Miranda Otto is quite believable as Bishop. The story is beautiful and sad, and the scenery of Brazil is not to be missed, simply beautiful, and beautifully filmed. 10/10

After the famous poet, Elizabeth Bishop, is greatly mentored by the star poet Robert Lowell, she, travels to Brazil, on her inheritance, has a love affair with a wealthy, female architect, who is in another love relationship with a former fellow student of Bishop's at Vassar College, called Mary. This threesome love relationship fails because each person involved in this relationship has a main flaw. Bishop's flaw is alcoholism. The architect's flaw is that she works herself to the point of mental insanity. Mary's flaw is jealousy. She does not want to share her architect girlfriend with Elizabeth Bishop, understandably.When watching the film in the cinema, yesterday, with the oranges and the red wine, I bought at the booth, all of us clapped at the end of the film, with wonderful actors, very beautiful scenery of Brazil as well as fantastic architecture, before tortillas, guacamole, nachos, corona and other Latin American snacks that were cheaply sold outside.This positive account begs the question, why I did not rate that film to be so good. Like many art-house or like many artsy films, Reaching for the Moon, we hardly know who most of the characters in this film truly are. There is just not enough character development in the film. We do not know what exactly makes Miss Bishop travel, why she loves this architect, why the architect loves her and why Mary loves this architect. We also do not know their views about belonging to a sexual minority. We do not know the reason for their flaws, such as the traumatic experiences that made Miss Bishop an alcoholic, what made the architect a workaholic, who does not talk to her family, and we know almost nothing about this third girl Mary, except that she went to University with Miss Bishop.We do not know the exact cause or even the nature of the architect's insanity. When she kills herself, she leaves no note, and nobody even asks or tries to find out why the hell she did it or if it was an accident. Like most films about poetry little attention is paid to the kind of Poetry Miss Bishop wrote, so that when she wins the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, in the film, you still end up leaving the movie theatre wondering why her poetry was considered to be so special, apart from the fact that she was rich, well educated and knew some of the greatest poets like Robert Lowell and Marian Moore. This film is full of paper Mache' characters, in which you hardly know who the people in the film are, despite the strong attempts of the actors in the film to act as well as possible, which made the film worth watching, especially as a poet and author myself, amongst other things.

I was sad to see this deeply moving, complex and intelligent story of the love between the award winning American poet Elizabeth Bishop and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares. so overlooked by U.S, audiences and critics. There are two outstanding performances by Miranda Otto as the outwardly shy and repressed alcoholic Bishop, and Gloria Pires as her opposite, an extroverted, highly emotional woman who coaxes Bishop out of her shell. Very nicely photographed, this reminded me of the best of the Merchant-Ivory films. It's not flashy. Indeed there's a quiet to it that is needed to off-set the melodramatic (even if based in truths) elements of these women's lives. But that doesn't keep it from packing a hell of an emotional punch, and in being bold enough to create characters we care for, but who are also deeply troubled and capable of making bad choices – just like in the real world of relationships we rarely see on screen. It was also nice to see a gay-themed love story that both acknowledged how difficult being homosexual was in the 1950s, while not becoming a film about that only. This is a film about a complex relationship between two highly creative and wounded souls who both save and damage each other. The fact that both are women is only a small part of the larger story. It's also one of the only films I've seen capture at least a taste of the struggle and loneliness of the act of writing. One of those little gems that deserves to be discovered by more people.