The Clipped View: Ponderings on the Point-of-view in the Cinematographic Adaptation of "Eu Receberia as Piores Notícias de seus Lindos Lábios"

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7917.2015v20n2p25

This paper was carried out to assess the cinematographic adaptation of Eu receberia as Piores Notícias dos seus Lindos Lábios, directed by Beto Brant and Renato Ciasca, based on the novel with the same title by Marçal Aquino. Both in the novel and in the film, every moment, the reader/viewer is invited to deal with the narrator-character's tense vision telling his own story connecting flashes of his own traumatic recollections. In a swinging movement, most of the time intersected by lines and accounts of supporting characters, the protagonist embodies the character of an afflicted narrator, who does not manage to get rid of haunting conflicts, mainly of Lavínia, a seductive and enigmatic woman with whom he had fallen in love. In our paper, the main interest is focused on the point-of-view. In the film the optical nature of the cinematographic medium takes a look into the structure of the dramatic action. Thus, the issue of the point-of-view stands out as a decisive category which reveals the very specificities of both literature and the cinema.