The pandemic prevented the biggest surprise among the tributes to Clarice Lispector’s centenary from premiering this year: the feature film “A Paixão Segundo G.H.”, based on the writer’s novel of the same name, written by filmmaker Luiz Fernando Carvalho.
Clarice was born on December 10, 1920, and published “The Passion According to G.H.” in 1964. Surprise and curiosity go hand in hand at the mere idea that someone would transpose this unconventional, seemingly “unfilmable” text onto the screen, in which the discursive torrent and the labyrinthine monologue themselves constitute a fact of the plot.
But this is exactly what Carvalho loves to do and does without fear. His relationship with literature is not new. He adapted Raduan Nassar’s novel “Lavoura Arcaica” into a film in 2001, and Ariano Suassuna’s “A Pedra do Reino” became a miniseries for TV Globo.