An Odyssey of Becoming: An Interview with the Makers of The Book of Delights (O Livro dos Prazeres)
Emily Lord-Kambitsch, with Marcela Lordy and Deborah Osborn, USA - Brazil
8 March 2023
Many affected by COVID-19 have encountered the virus’ remarkable ability to dismantle the work of the senses, and our capacities to connect with ourselves, nature, and one another. In week two of my own self-isolation, I found great solace in a film that reminded me of my capacity for experiencing pleasure in solitude, and in life’s simple joys. That film, The Book of Delights, embraces its viewer in what director Marcela Lordy has described as a “story of humanization through the development of consciousness.”[1] One of its promotional stills (Fig. 1) depicts protagonist Lóri wandering the beach before dawn. When I first viewed the film, I felt kinship with this moment in the story that features the ocean as a symbol of self-knowledge and self-renewal.
Fig. 1: Lóri on the beach, The Book of Delights (O Livro dos Prazeres) (2020).
Adapted from Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector’s 1969 novel, Uma Aprendizagem ou O Livro dos Prazeres (An Apprenticeship or The Book of Delights), the film was produced by Marcela Lordy (Cinematográfica Marcela) and Deborah Osborn (bigBonsai), and co-produced by Rizoma Films, República Pureza, and Canal Brasil in 2020. The film’s protagonist Lóri (Simone Spoladore) navigates erotic agency, dissatisfaction, and loneliness, and learns to find pleasure in solitude and connection with others from an outlook of self-knowledge. Lóri develops a relationship with Ulisses (Javier Drolas), a philosophy professor from Argentina, named after the famous Greek hero who longs to hear the sirens’ deadly song on his travels through worlds known and unknown. In what Marcela Lordy has described as “an inside-out Homer’s Odyssey,”[2] it is Lóri, named after a siren from Germanic folklore, who breaches the boundaries of women in traditional narratives. She is both siren and hero; she does the traveling, through the depths of herself in her urgent need to listen to her inner voice, and to find impassioned experience at the core of her being, before returning to Ulisses, who awaits her.
As a comparative mythologist by profession, I was curious to hear Marcela comment on the mythic symbolism in the film and its roots in Lispector’s novel. I had the privilege of speaking with Marcela and co-producer Deborah Osborn about their ten-year journey of adapting Lispector’s novel for the screen, and expanding the frontiers of female filmmaking in Brazil through their adaptation of Lispector’s compelling, progressive story of a woman in the process of becoming.
Emily: What is your storytelling style, and how is this reflected in The Book of Delights?
Marcela: I have always loved poetry and photography, so there is something sensorial in my films, and I have always tried to talk about political things, but in a poetic way. My films are more psychological dramas, and reflexive, and they put the women in the center of the narrative, in the place of power and equality with men. I think this is something we are always trying to do in our lives. There is also a little irony and humor in the way I tell the stories, because I think the humor and poetry are good ways to touch a big audience.
Emily: What were your priorities in adapting Clarice Lispector’s 1969 novel Uma Aprendizagem ou Livro dos Prazeres for the screen today?
Marcela: I think you can read this book in different ways. On one level the storytelling is very simple, about love in its romantic part, on a horizontal plane, and then you have the vertical plane, the very deep, transcendental, spiritual elements that Clarice wanted to emphasize, so we had a lot of work to do in order to translate the vertical part. The book was written in 1967-8, and published in 1969, in the middle of a dictatorial period with a lot of censorship, and Clarice tried to express the problem of women’s space in society. In Brazil there was at that time a very patriarchal society, and 50 years later we still have the same problems. Society’s mentality remains sexist. We had a dictatorial government in the last 4 years,[3] and we have the same limited political positions for women in Brazil. Also, as a director it is difficult for me. As a producer, it is difficult for Deborah. We took ten years to develop the script, to get the funding, to have the space to make this film with such a feminine theme. I think Lóri is a melancholic character, because she is not comfortable with her place in society. She wants to be an independent, free woman.
Deborah: My view is that it got better. We are not in the same place as we were in ’69. We still have a lot of issues and problems, but I think women have more of a voice in society and self-representation…it’s still tough, but I think it’s better than it was. In ’69, it was what they call the years of lead military dictatorship, the worst years of the period. And of course with Bolsonaro it was tough, but it’s not exactly the same. Things have changed but we are still fighting.
Marcela: We are in the third wave of feminism in the world, so things are better, but we are still having problems in Brazil especially, where there is a high murder rate of women. When I read the book I said to myself, ‘Wow, this woman, Lóri, is in the process of getting to know her autonomy, her power.’ It’s beautiful because in cinematic narratives, women are always portrayed as either in a bad place, or supporting male characters.
Deborah: The idea is that she is the protagonist of her own life.
Fig. 2: Lóri facing the water, The Book of Delights (O Livro dos Prazeres) (2020).
Emily: I am interested in your take on the mythic significance of Lóri’s name (from Lorelai the siren in Germanic folklore). What aspects of a siren does Lóri embody and what does the element of water symbolize for her?
Marcela: The siren symbolizes two things – the voice, and how to love without losing yourself, through listening to your emotions. As a siren Lóri seduces the man, but she has to learn not to kill this man. The voice relates to her autonomy, independence, and realization that she’s just learning how to become a woman, as Simone de Beauvoir says: ‘you are not born a woman, you become one’. I think Lóri’s trajectory leads her to pay attention to her desires and needs, and then she can be at peace to be with another person, equal to equal. The sirens in mythology are a danger because they have wisdom, just like Eve when she takes the apple. There is danger in women’s knowledge. Lóri is a deep woman, and afraid of her power. The water, beyond the symbolism of purification, is a symbol of Lori’s fertility, wisdom and healing. She goes through the depths of herself when she goes into the ocean, a symbol of the feminine.
Emily: And surely this relates to Lóri’s role as a teacher, encouraging the students to listen to their emotions?
Marcela: Yes, I think she is learning, and she needs the students to learn with her. And she starts to have pleasure in educating these children. So she is not only connecting with romantic love, in her relationship with Ulisses, but also with unconditional love, and love for her mother, whose memory her brother carries.
Fig. 3: Lóri and Ulisses, The Book of Delights (O Livro dos Prazeres) (2020).
Emily: Let’s talk about Ulisses, named for the Greek hero who famously heard the sirens’ song and survived to tell the tale. Ulisses in Greek mythology bears resemblance to the character in your film: the storyteller and philosopher who likes the sound of his own voice, and who is kind of wayward. Can you speak more to his characterization?
Marcela: You always expect the men in the classical narratives to go through the big journey and come back to Ithaca like Ulisses while his wife Penelope waits for him. Clarice [Lispector] inverted the roles. She has Lóri making the big journey inside herself, and casts Ulisses as Penelope, waiting for Lóri to connect her soul with her mind. The siren is also the symbol of the rational, human head and an animal body, and Lóri needs to connect both parts of herself, to be integrated. Ulisses is completely in love with her. He is a little older, and he tries to show her that she needs to accept the crisis of her own process. In the book, Ulisses is more of a psychologist. He tells her what to do. But when we made the film, we adapted this. He is a catalyzer, a very important part of Lóri’s process, but he is not the only one involved. There is her brother, her students, everyone who connects Lóri with the world. Lóri also has to learn to have pleasure in the ordinary, the quotidian, for example arranging her fruit bowl, which in Clarice’s novel is a symbol of the ephemeral. I think Ulisses is trying to show her how to be okay in herself, to accept loneliness, and to be at peace with the ordinary.
Emily: The film is beautifully shot. I would love to hear about the aesthetic aspects you feel most proud of and how they support the core themes of the film.
Marcela: I see Lóri’s apartment as an aquarium, a fishbowl. She’s trapped inside this apartment and through the windows she can see the ocean calling her, like a siren. I like this as the geography of the film. And also the camera – at the beginning I had it very close to her body, so that we can feel her anguish with her. As the film progresses Lóri encounters the world outside of the aquarium, in bigger spaces, in open air. The camerawork goes from close shots to open frames as Lóri connects with people. Then the mood is more contemplative and calm as the film goes along, until Lóri starts to feel pleasure in herself, dancing, eating the fig…
Deborah: You can see the changes in Lóri through the apartment. In the beginning there are all these boxes, and the mattress is in the living room, as if she is not ready to really live anywhere. But then she starts to inhabit it, to put things in order, and puts up the picture of the family country house, and you see her process of inhabiting herself through the apartment.
Fig. 4: Lóri in her apartment, The Book of Delights (O Livro dos Prazeres) (2020).
Emily: I am interested in your philosophy as an artist. What do you think the relationship is between self-representation and the capacity for living fully, living wildly, and living a life of love?
Marcela: I think we are worried about what other people are going to think about who we are. This capacity to live in plenitude is to listen to your emotions. You also have to accept the mystery of life. You do not have to control everything, because it’s impossible, and you cannot control other people. You need to be connected with your emotions, and to be free of the expectations of society. This I think is a very feminine trajectory, because we since the beginning are given specific tasks growing up, such as getting married and having a baby.
Emily: Let’s talk about the final dialogue between Lóri and Ulisses, when she asks him, ‘Is love gifting each other our own solitude?’ There seems to be an important, or an essential aspect of personal sovereignty that Lóri needed to establish for herself before this moment. Does one need to undergo an existential crisis to find deeper capacities for loving?
Marcela: It is important in order to learn how to be human. We need to be able to deal with frustration because not everything is good all the time; we need these small deaths. Death is part of life. Sometimes we are in the world of illusion that we are going to find our other half and be happy, like in fairy tales. It’s difficult to deal with the other, with differences, but you have to accept the different. And there’s nothing more intimate and beautiful than silence, to be quiet with another human. Sometimes we lose this; we think we have to fill in everything with words, our anguish and our anxiety. Silence is part of life, and Lóri tries to run from her pain in the beginning. She does not want to face it, or to build relationships with anyone – she has sex like an automaton, disconnected from her soul, afraid of connection. But then she learns that she cannot be alone. Solitude is a good thing, but it depends on the way that you face it.
Emily: Let’s talk about the end of the film. What does it mean for you to end with a frame presenting a colon (:), in keeping with the end of Lispector’s novel?
Marcela: It’s like an invitation for women to offer new narratives. The book begins with a comma – it’s very interesting, because the whole book is a flow of thought. It starts with a comma, and proceeds with Lóri’s thoughts in a very modern way, in terms of literature, and finishes with a colon. People buy the book and say, ‘come on, it’s missing a page’ [laughs]. It’s like a shot, a still moment in life’s fluidity. I like to see the end as a segue, an invitation – let’s tell other stories.
Emily: What do you think are the most important stories women should tell these days?
Marcela: We need to stop saying that we feel inferior, that we are not good enough. We need to stop the imposter syndrome. That’s very female. No, we are clever, we bring life into the world, we bring histories; we are creative, interesting, strong. We have to try to construct for audiences stories that put women in a position of equality. I don’t want to diminish men. Regardless of gender, social status, race, physical disability – the most important thing is for people to feel they are equal and free. My next film, an original script, is about listening to the other, and I would like to develop a third work with a scenario in which there is an abuse of power. It is important to defend and protect the person who does not feel that they are capable. Because everybody is!
Emily: In the interest of our journal’s readers, in what ways does your work speak to the subject of ‘borderlands’, or crossing boundaries, whether in terms of themes, genres, media, or audiences?
Marcela: The essential point is this: this is my first feature film [apart from documentaries] and also Deborah’s, so we learned how to become a director and a producer of fiction through the process, a process of apprenticeship, as the book is named. The Book of Delights is a book about how to become a woman, and for me this was a process of becoming a director. Like a siren, I found the tone and the power of my voice. Now we are holding screenings and traveling all over the world. This is beautiful in terms of the theme of borderlands, because we are offering some universal, very human questions.
Emily: And certainly the process of becoming is something everyone can relate to. I’m glad to hear that this film is receiving more worldwide attention, and inspiring more women to tell their stories! Thank you for your time.
American film magazine Variety has called The Book of Delights “a contemporary love odyssey.”[4] The film has received favorable reviews in publications including The New York Times,[5] Crooked Marquee[6] (United States), La Nación[7] (Argentina), Jornal de Brasília,[8] O Globo,[9] (Brazil), and many others. The film has won awards and distinctions from BAFICI 2021 (Argentina), São Paulo International Film Festival 2020 (Brazil), Vitória Film Festival 2020 (Brazil), and Vassoras Film Festival (2022). It is being screened by Vitrine Films in Brazil, and M-Appeal worldwide, and is available for streaming on Kanopy, Prime Video, and other platforms.
[1] Lordy, Marcela. “Director’s Statement.” March 2021. bigBonsai.
[2] Lordy, Marcela. “Director’s Statement.” March 2021. bigBonsai.
[3] Marcela is referring to Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency (2019-2022).
[4]https://variety.com/2021/film/features/book-of-delights-marcela-lordy-m-appeal-1234933607/
[5]https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/movies/the-book-of-delights-review.html
[6]https://crookedmarquee.com/vodepths-what-to-see-and-avoid-on-demand-this-week-48/
[7]https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/cine/estrenos-de-cine-el-libro-de-los-placeres-es-una-version-con-contraluces-del-texto-de-lispector-nid08122022/
[8]https://jornaldebrasilia.com.br/blogs-e-colunas/pisicanalise/o-livro-dos-prazeres-ou-da-aprendizagem/
[9]https://oglobo.globo.com/rioshow/noticia/2022/09/o-livro-dos-prazeres-inspirado-em-clarice-lispector-se-sai-melhor-quando-se-distancia-da-obra.ghtml
Marcela Lordy is a director, screenwriter and producer. Her production spans cinema, television, theatre and visual arts, as revealed by her films Dreams of Lulu (2009), The Impassive Muse (2010), Listen to the River: A Sound Sculpture by Cildo Meireles (2012), Be What You Are (2018), and Love and the Plague (2021). All awarded at festivals around the world. For television, she directed episodes of the children’s series Julie e os Fantasmas, nominated for the Emmy Awards (2012), and the series Passionais (2012) and Turma da Mônica (2022). In 2012, she founded Cinematográfica Marcela, an independent producer of cultural character, with the purpose of co-producing the films of her authorship. With The Book of Delights, her first feature film of fiction, according to American magazine Variety, she is part of a new generation of Brazilian filmmakers, one of the most interesting current phenomena in Latin American cinema.
Born in São Paulo, Deborah Osborn is a founding partner at bigBonsai, and responsible for the creative production of entertainment projects including documentaries Dominguinhos and Taking Iacanga, screened at the most important documentary festivals worldwide – IDFA, DOK Leipzig, SXSW and It’s All True – and celebrated on streaming platforms such as Netflix and Prime Video. bigBonsai’s projects broadcasting in Brazilian territory nowadays include: feature film The Book of Delights; doc series My Life is Circus, shot in 8 countries (HBO Max); talk-show Olhares Brasileiros (for CNN Brazil); and true crime podcast Leila. Last year the company developed a portfolio of projects under the mentorship of British filmmaker (and Oscar winner) Kevin Macdonald.