"Não posso ir ao seu encontro porque eu já estou com você." (Richard Bach)

Na era do mundo virtual onde as mensagens chegam tão rápido. Onde parece que logo tudo é descartado. Me pego a pensar se os jovens entenderiam a amizade que durou quase 20 anos entre Helen e Frank. E que com eles foram por cartas. Num passado não muito distante.

O filme é baseado na história da escritora Helene Hanif (Anne Bancroft). Pediram a ela para contar algo sobre a sua vida. E ela nos brinda com parte da sua vida adulta onde pontua um grande e inestimável amigo: Frank P. Doel (Anthony Hopkins).

Tudo começou em 1949. Na busca por certos livros, e fora do seu orçamento... um anúncio em uma revista de uma Livraria & Antiquários, em Londres, a leva a escrever uma carta. A primeira de inúmeras... Ah! Ela morando em Nova Iorque. E Frank responde dizendo que parte dos "problemas" dela já estavam resolvidos.

Pelo preços muito em conta, pela gentileza nos envios seguindo junto cartas numa linguagem pessoal, também foram fatores que deram início a essa longa amizade. Mas o que contribuiu mesmo, o que enraizou essa relação era o humor de ambos. Da parte dele, por ser tímido, como também casado, ficou mais comedido no início. Agora, o jeito extrovertido de Helen, do jeito divertido até em reclamar, acabou por conquistar de vez não apenas a ele, como os demais funcionários.

Além dos pedidos dos livros, Helen passou a confidenciar seu dia-a-dia. Como forma de retribuir o carinho, por eles estarem sobre um racionamentos do pós-guerra no tocante a certos alimentos, ela passou a enviar em datas especiais cestas de alimentos: embutidos, enlatados... Uma empresa na Dinamarca as vendia em catálogos. Para eles, um mimo inestimável.

Quando Helen obtinha recursos financeiros para cruzar o Atlântico e então conhecê-los, imprevistos a levava a usar o dinheiro. Assim, o tempo foi passando.

O filme começa quando ela enfim, vai a Londres. A partir dai, é que ficamos conhecendo esses anos todos. Em até que, como numa frase que ela diz no filme (Esqueci a autoria.): "Não sei se eles acreditarão ou não, mas eu estive lá." É, lá está ela, dentro daquele lugar que lhe é tão caro! E eu não consegui reter as lágrimas. Nem não sendo mais a primeira vez que vejo. Filmaço! Eu amo!

Ah sim! Eu adoro o título dado no Brasil: "Nunca Te Vi, Sempre Te Amei!" Sou uma eterna romântica.

Por: Valéria Miguez.

Nunca Te Vi, Sempre Te Amei (84 Charing Cross Road). 1987. Reino Unido. Direção: David Hugh Jones. Elenco: Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, Judi Dench. Gênero: Comédia, Drama, Romance. Duração: 100 minutos.

- opening lines to 84 Charing Cross Road (1987)

The 1970s memoirs of New York writer Helen Hanff -- 84 Charing Cross Road (and partly, The Douchess of Bloomsbury Street in 1973) -- became the basis for the 1987 film directed by David Hugh Jones.

Anne Bancroft takes the starring role as Hanff (Mel Brooks, the late actress's husband, purchased the rights to the book as a birthday gift one year). Hanff is at heart, a bibliophile, and it is literary voraciousness that serves as the impetus of the story. Unable to find obscure classics and forgotten British literature in New York City ("Doesn't anyone read in New York anymore?" she rhetorically asks surprised customers of a bookstore upon leaving), she sees an advertisement for Marks & Co., a bookstore in England that specializes in used, rare titles. And what begins in the 1940s as an overseas customer desperately searching for out-of-print books evolves into more than a thirty-year friendship between Hanff and the staff of the bookstore (especially Chief Buyer, Frank Doel who is played by the (later) uncharacteristically charismatic Anthony Hopkins).

Hanff's short memoirs are a collection of the letters primarily exchanged between she and Doel, all used verbatim in the film. And on the one hand, the film reveals distinctions between pre- and post-war United States and Great Britain, though its focus is more of the cultural rather than political affairs of each, differences which are particularly learned through correspondence in the days long before instant access to seemingly trivial information. Hanff orders a gift basket of food for the bookstore employees at Christmas--relatively simple things like canned ham and fruit preserves. One of the gracious employees writes to thank Hanff, explaining that most of the items received were either things that could only be located on the black market, or, like meats, limited by ration stamps.

The interaction between the characters in the two countries is almost entirely through correspondence, which, if remade today, would probably lose that novelty. But, because most of the interaction is through characters, the filmmakers in time abandon the cumbersome display of one character writing or reading the letters while its author or recipient reads what is written. This is a film, after all, that is translated from a series of letters and demands creativity as such. Once the relationship of Hanff and the employees of the Marks & Co. bookstore becomes more than mere transactions between a store and its customer, the characters--especially Hanff and Doel--began to speak the words of their letters directly to the camera, cutting back and forth with each other's responses. But there is certain discomfort in a friendship existing entirely through letters, and thus, the major question becomes--will Hanff ever meet her British friends and especially the cordial Frank Doel?

It is a very simple, pleasant film and one who's cinematography suggests a British public television quality to it, which may not be of any surprise, considering prior adaptations as BBC teleplays and radio plays, in addition to stage performances. Screenwriter Hugh Whitemore, who adapted the BBC teleplay in 1975 as part of the Play for Today series, holds the screenwriter credits for this 1987 film adaptation of Hanff's memoirs, expanding the characters to "include Hanff's Manhattan friends [which includes actress Mercedes Rhuel], the bookshop staff, and Doel's wife Nora, played by Judi Dench. Bancroft won a BAFTA Award as Best Actress; Whitemore and Dench were [respectively] nominated for direction and supporting performance." 1

It has been suggested that Hanff's memoirs are not entirely based on actual events. "Although claimed to be a true story, at least one source implies that there was a bit of artistic license. Leo Marks, later a screenwriter, was the son of the bookstore's owner, and the head of codes and communication for Britain's special operatives and the underground during WWII, despite being barely old enough for college. In his book "Between Silk and Cyanide" he says of his father: 'He never read the gentle little myth by Helene Hanff; Long before it was published he'd become one himself.'" But others still seem content to maintain a sense of that history--especially of the Marks & Co. bookstore while the film at least maintains that wonderful romanticism.