O Amor natural

In 1993, Heddy Honigmann interviewed a large number of taxi drivers in Lima for her film Metal and Melancholy. The result was a beautiful sketch of the bittersweet life in Peru. In O amor natural, Honigmann captures Brazilian society, her angle in this case being the erotic poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987), who is considered to be one of the greatest Latin American poets of the last century. Drummond made his debut in 1930 and published his last collection of poems in 1985. Between 1965 and 1985, he also wrote erotic poems that sing the praises of sexual love: "Love - being an essential word - / begin this song, envelop it all / Love guide my verse, and as it guides / wed soul, desire, member and vulva." Honigmann took these poems, which were published under the title O amor natural, as the point of departure for her film. In Rio de Janeiro, she talks with people about sex, love and their memories of it. ("Without sex there is no love, and without love there is no sex.") As with Metal and Melancholy, the result is a film that transcends the anecdotal and personal and that offers a penetrating image of sensual Brazilian culture. Honigmann initially called her film Love and Melancholy, a film "that glorifies the physical side of love, through sobriety and humor, through bluntness and tenderness, through melancholy".