Oscar Wilde wrote: "Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a soulless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring." He might have added: Sometimes when we think we are through with love, love surprises us and opens up our hearts again.
This breezy romantic comedy is set in Rio de Janeiro and directed by Bruno Barreto (Four Days in September). Mary Ann Simpson (Amy Irving) is a former flight attendant and widow who has been living in the city for two years since the accidental death of her husband, a Brazilian pilot. She teaches English. One of her students is Pedro Paulo (Antonio Fagundes), a middle-aged lawyer whose marriage to Tania (Debra Block) has just come to an end. She left him for a Chinese Tai-Chi-Chuan teacher.
When Pedro unexpectedly falls in love with Mary Ann, neither of them is prepared. She has been giving advice to Nadine (Dricia Moraes), one of her students, who has become romantically interested in Gary, a Soho artist she's met on the Internet. Another student of Mary Ann's is Acacio (Alexandre Borges), Rio's most popular soccer star. He is being pursued by Sharon (Giovanna Antonelli), a law intern who works for Pedro Paulo's half-brother, who works with his father (Alberto De Mendoza), a tailor.
Based on a novel by Sergio Sant 'Anna, this charming drama is dedicated to Francois Truffaut. That makes sense since the men and women here, like the characters in Truffaut's films, are consistently flabbergasted by their feelings and overwhelmed by their susceptibility to l'amour. Mary Ann and Pedro Paulo dance around their yearning for each other and it seems to affect the others, almost like a contagion. Bossa Nova is an enchanting testimony to Oscar Wilde's view: love does bring warmth and richness to life.