I broke three ribs and I’m all sore, says Fernanda Montenegro

It was Fernanda Montenegro, 92, to arrive at Livraria da Travessa, in the Leblon neighborhood of Rio, for a crowd of people to form around her. At the launch of the new edition of “Revista Brasileira”, publication of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the actress and immortal of ABL was the great attraction among her peers. Natural as it may be, but this time there was one more reason: the carioca was longing to see Fernanda on the streets and at cultural events in the city.

At least in the south zone, there are few who have never bumped into her on their walks along the beach, in bookstores, cinemas or theaters. The actress, however, has been a recluse since mid-May, when she slipped at home and was seriously injured. “I broke three ribs in this terrible fall,” she tells F5. “It’s hurting a lot, when I breathe the bones don’t stay still”, she describes.

Fernanda, however, looks strong. She talks to everyone who approaches her, poses for photos, hugs those closest to her. She pulls up a “Uhuuu!” when the birthday boy and also immortal Zuenir Ventura wins a birthday cake and a chorus of “Happy Birthday” in the middle of the bookstore.

As she stretches out her arm to clap for the journalist, she exposes a device on her wrist, like a watch, with a button in the middle. “If I press it, it goes straight to my doctor. It’s for an emergency,” she explains. The accessory was installed after the accident.

It happened shortly before the actress started her participation as a protagonist in the film “Dona Vitória”, which Breno Silveira was starting to shoot in Pernambuco. The director suffered a massive heart attack on May 14 – Fernanda still couldn’t get around, so she didn’t go to the wake. “I couldn’t go, there was no way,” she explained to Malu Mader. “Of course, everyone knew that, imagine,” says Malu.

The deforestation of the Amazon and the environmental policy of the Bolsonaro government were also topics in Fernanda’s conversation with friends and admirers. “They are destroying the forest. Man is man’s wolf,” she said, quoting the phrase, from the Latin homo homini lupus, popularized by philosopher Thomas Hobbes in “Leviathan”.

When talking about cultural management, Fernanda preferred not to talk specifically about the issue of millionaire fees from city halls to sertanejo artists linked to bolsonarismo or about the president’s criticism of artists who resort to the Rouanet Law. In two sentences, she summed up what she thinks (and was moved to say them: “The artist has become a sub-race in this government. Culture has become a crime.”