O Amor Natural (1996)

Directed by: Heddy Honigmann | 76 minutes | documentary

‘O Amor Natural’ is not only a fascinating film for lovers of poetry and lovers of Brazil. The documentary by the Dutch Heddy Honigmann is about the celebrated poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade. In addition to his well-known work, he also wrote a number of very erotic poems, which were only published after his death in the collection O Amor Natural. In the documentary, Honigmann gives the floor to Brazilians about this man’s poems. Many turn out to be moved and reminisce about their own love and sex life as a result of Drummond’s poetry. The confessions of the mostly elderly Brazilians, whom Honigmann interviews, give Drummond’s poems an extra meaning. They not only express love, as Carlos Drummond de Andrade himself felt it, the poems describe love and eroticism in a typically Brazilian way.

A pity about ‘O Amor Natural’ is the incoherence of the various interviews. Why did Honigmann decide to interview these people? A number of people have been acquainted with Carlos Drummond de Andrade, but it is unclear why some people are asked about Drummond’s poems. What is nice about this arbitrariness, however, is the openness of the various people. The Brazilians seem very open about their sex life. It is inconceivable that Dutch elderly people would talk about their sexual past in this way.

Ten years after ‘O Amor Natural’ was screened at the Amsterdam documentary festival IDFA (1996), the film is one of the first documentaries to be released under the name IDFA’s delicacies. ‘O Amor Natural’ is one of Honigman’s first films, who would later make many more documentaries. Music and homesickness are usually the guideline, themes that in fact also tie in with ‘O Amor Natural’. The poems written in Portuguese by Carlos Drummond are therefore music to your ears.

Despite some arbitrariness on the part of filmmaker Heddy Honigmann in the choice of her interlocutors and the sometimes somewhat amateurish images, ‘O Amor Natural’ is a fascinating portrait of Brazil. Do not expect eroticism, but do expect emotion, because that is what the core of Carlos Drummond’s poems actually contain.