Miúcha is a singer that breaks free, in this documentary, from the descriptions that reduce her to being the sister of Chico Buarque, wife of João Gilberto and collaborator of Vinicius de Moraes or Tom Jobim. Her contributions to the bossa nova movement are deepened and we follow how she navigated her marriage and tried to define her career. The film relies on personal archives that include photographs, letters, watercolors and audio recordings.
Miúcha’s life is inevitably described through the prism of the men who surrounded her and whose fame obscured her voice. Heloísa Maria Buarque de Hollanda tells her life story in a fascinating way because she herself was a good storyteller. Home recordings, statements and personal archives reveal a woman with a giant appetite for music and for cosmopolitan life. The film ends up focusing mainly on the decades of her marriage to João Gilberto, although it focuses on her life before and after Gilberto, and on her years-long stays in New York, New Jersey, and Mexico City. We are left with a portrait of a woman who had difficulty in freeing herself from the chains of a normative existence and who won a solo career at great personal cost. (Ana Cabral Martins)