Cinebiographed lives

This excerpt deals with the interdialogical relationships between the book Flores raras e banalíssimas (1995), by Carmem L. Oliveira, and the film Flores raras (2013), by Bruno Barreto, having as comparative guidance the considerations of Arfuch (2010) and Ricoeur (2010) on biography and writing of subjective discourses, as well as the questions by Green (2000) and Miskolci (2006) regarding the closet in which the desires and affections between people of the same sex were forcibly placed in most cultures. We seek to point out the proximity and distance between the two works book and film, analyzing the strategies used by both Oliveira (1995) and Barreto (2013), for the biographical composition of the love story between the Brazilian architect Maria Carlota Costallat de Macedo Soares (1910-1967) and the North American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979). The selection, interpretation and narration of this lesbian marriage, against the background of Rio de Janeiro in 1950-70, engender many symbolic and cultural issues, for which we adopt the perspective of free listening, avoiding judgments and projections, and trying, always, follow the comings and goings of the artistic reports themselves.