Hollywood is often thought of as the vanguard of progressive America, a hotspot of liberal values and cultural reformism forever tapped into the zeitgeist. When it comes to gender equality, facts point to a grimmer reality: that tinsel town is a male-dominated institution where women are relegated to the peripheries and has been since its inception.
A study published early this year, conducted for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, found that of the top 100 films released in America in 2013 a mere 15% starred a female protagonist
It is rare for a film to feature one female in a lead role, let alone two or three. Director Bruno Barreto’s Reaching for the Moon, a romantic drama centred around Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto) and her relationship with Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares (Glória Pires), is an exception.
Set in the 1950s, an inspiration-starved Elizabeth relocates from New York to Rio de Janeiro to visit her college friend Mary (Tracy Middendorf), who is in a long-term lesbian relationship with Lota.
Steamy chemistry between Lota and the increasingly drink-addled poet give the film a love triangle structure, and when Mary adopts a young girl things get more complicated. Much of the film transpires in the beautiful lush house and gardens Lato designed, where Elizabeth encounters freedom and constraint in equal measure: she can write freely but comes to feel emotionally trapped.
Reaching for the Moon isn’t rare just because it stars female actors. It’s also explores lesbian relationships –not in the context of grungy, indie dramas involving young exploratory women –but about older and more sensible people for whom making sense of their sexuality is not a prerogative. Barreto does so with a middle of the road sensibility — the glossy styling of a film designed for broad consumption.
There are times when Reaching for the Moon tinkers on the precipice of cheesiness — a sort of postcard upper-crust erotic drama that comes close to feeding into cliches, a la Seinfeld’s fictitious Rochelle Rochelle. If it stays on the right side of the line it does so only just. One bathtub-set scene in which Elizabeth washes Lota’s hair, in front of a window looking out onto bright well kept gardens, plays like a shampoo commercial: close-up hand running through hair; pristine looking mid-shot in bathtub; wash (so to speak), dry, repeat.
Overlapping Bishop’s own poetry via voice over allows Barreto moments of sentimentality without the pervading scent of the saccharine. Marcelo Zarvos’ score is overpowering at times but it’s offset by the film’s better attributes, particularly a genuinely heartfelt central relationship between Elizabeth and Mary and a radiant performance from Miranda Otto.