What was it like to have four hands writing the same screenplay?
Fernanda - When we were approached, Bruno, Lucy and Luiz Carlos knew exactly what they wanted, with A Senhorita Simpson as a source of inspiration. Then Alexandre and I have extracted from the novel its narrative epicenter - a widowed English teacher, in Rio, has an affair with one of her students. Bruno was always very specific about having Rio as a backdrop for all these romances, but gave us ample space to create on top of his vision. Alexandre and I had worked together previously on television and I had already written the screenplay adaptation of my first book. With BOSSA NOVA's script, our working strategy was to consider a scene final only when we both agreed on it. We worked pretty fast - about two months - in a very nice and easy flow. I think we only fought only once, but I can't even remember why.

Alexandre - A very happy marriage. Bruno offered several ideas - of showing several kinds of love in a "Truffaut fashion", with lots of Bossa Nova, and I think we've managed to develop some rather interesting ideas, very easily. I've learned a lot working with Fernanda, because, as a novelist, she fleshed out certain aspects of their relationships, how they could be more genuine, true, human. There's no doubt I've gained a lot from working with her - and our script did, too.

Fernanda has written three novels and Alexandre writes for publicity and advertising agency W.Brasil, i.e., two completely different approaches to the text and its linguistic style. How did you cope with these differences?
Fernanda - I tend to be more verbose, whereas Alexandre's dialogues are more direct and concise. I might have explored more the playful nature of the text, with my novelist's intuition, but we keep our work pretty much a totally collaborative effort. We had established bases for our work, which were never followed too strictly. We discussed several touchy issues together and enjoyed a lot of freedom.

Alexandre - Writing for publicity, I've been creating scripts almost daily, for the past 20 years. But I don't want to limit myself to writing for advertising campaigns - I want to invest more in the film market. Fernanda's approach is slightly different - she's a novelist - and using Bruno's suggestions as a starting point, we were then able to mix everyone's ideas in a very productive fashion.