Vitali­na Varela – first look review

Try­ing to describe the cin­e­ma of Pedro Cos­ta is like try­ing to describe why the qui­et, pri­vate moments of a life are mov­ing – like a per­son sit­ting on a bed lost in thought, or a per­son thor­ough­ly sweep­ing the kitchen-floor of a recent­ly deceased friend, or a per­son final­ly tak­ing a plane from Cape Verde to Por­tu­gal, 40 years lat­er than anticipated.

That lat­ter per­son is Vitali­na Varela, who arrives bare­foot into Costa’s cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse, a set­ting at once the­atri­cal­ly removed from real­i­ty and piti­less­ly immersed in the worst of it. Once again, Cos­ta has filmed in Fontain­has, a place well-known to his dis­ci­ples and well-described in this excel­lent Cri­te­ri­on arti­cle. To sum­marise: it is the heart of depri­va­tion, a slum pop­u­lat­ed by sor­row-eyed immi­grants and natives on the fringes of Por­tuguese soci­ety, all thrust into the only envi­ron­ment that scrap­ing by allows.

Cos­ta lights and frames the occu­pants of this world with such majesty that they become kings and queens of the sil­ver screen, state­ly beings who could well be the sub­jects of a cof­fee-table book of luxe pho­tographs by a street poet like Diane Arbus. Where she main­ly snapped white peo­ple, here Cos­ta puts black skin in the spot­light – a spot­light which cen­tres the actor and leaves the rest of the image shroud­ed in darkness.

This is a sto­ry about a woman com­ing to terms with being cos­mi­cal­ly dis­ap­point­ed by her hus­band. Joaquim mar­ried a young Vitali­na in Cape Verde, they spent 45 days togeth­er build­ing a house until he hit the road and land­ed up in Por­tu­gal where he reg­u­lar­ly promised to fly Vitali­na over to join him. Only, he nev­er did. She first sets foot in his adop­tive land three days after he dies. ​“There’s noth­ing here for you,” a woman whis­pers, but Vitali­na will not be moved. Hav­ing wait­ed her whole life to come here, she has unfin­ished busi­ness. While her husband’s body is no longer of this world, his spir­it remains. She talks to him as she exists in his for­mer liv­ing space. It’s light-heart­ed repar­tee along the lines of: ​“Your death can’t erase the evil you have done.”

The men left behind clue Vitali­na into the details of her husband’s crim­i­nal life with a tra­jec­to­ry inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the real­i­ties of resid­ing at Fontain­has. She finds a com­pan­ion in an elder­ly priest (Cos­ta reg­u­lar, Ven­tu­ra). Spir­i­tu­al­ly raw moments with the priest break up scenes of her alone reck­on­ing with a mar­riage bru­tal­ly devoid of clo­sure. Here, ​“till death do us part” takes on a very dif­fer­ent mean­ing. A home­less cou­ple, Ntoni (Manuel Tavares Almei­da) and Mari­na (Mari­na Alves Domingues) vis­it, tak­ing suc­cour from her cook­ing. Their wretched ener­gies and sto­ries per­me­ate and trans­form our sense of Joaquim’s rea­son­ing. Ques­tions about a man seen only in pho­tos hang heavy in the air: Why did he mar­ry her? Only to leave her? But still stay in touch?

Dead men tell no tales, so Cos­ta lets a breath­ing woman emerge at the fore. Vital­e­na chan­nels dashed dreams of one day being reunit­ed with her hus­band into ren­o­vat­ing his shack. Liv­ing space is a motif, and the house that Joaq built is not a patch on the one they built togeth­er in Cape Verde once upon a time. In as much as weighty emo­tions and social obser­va­tions abound, Costa’s is a cin­e­ma of images. It’s open sea­son on intel­lec­tu­al­is­ing and mak­ing sense of the visu­al lan­guage, how­ev­er, for this review­er, the plea­sure lay in receiv­ing them in their raw state.

In one scene, Vital­e­na takes a show­er in the tiny cubi­cle which hap­pens to be behind wire bars. The cam­era shoots from out­side these bars in one sta­t­ic wide as she mas­sages her hair, eyes closed. This mas­sag­ing con­tin­ues for a sooth­ing­ly long time, until a piece of pow­dery con­crete comes loose and hits Vital­e­na on the head. It’s not impact­ful enough to cause harm but it does give her pause, and the cam­era stays with her embed­ded in that pause.