Horse Money | Little White Lies

Horse Mon­ey

17 Sep 2015 / Released: 18 Sep 2015

Words by Jordan Cronk

Directed by Pedro Costa

Starring Antonio Santos, Ventura, and Vitalina Varela

Two people sitting in a dimly lit room, a man wearing a suit and a woman wearing a leather jacket and headband.
Two people sitting in a dimly lit room, a man wearing a suit and a woman wearing a leather jacket and headband.
5

Anticipation.

The Portuguese master’s first fiction feature in almost a decade.

5

Enjoyment.

A beautiful and grotesque evocation of repressed cultural memory.

5

In Retrospect.

One of the most impressive accomplishments of Costa’s career.

Pedro Cos­ta returns with his first fea­ture since 2006. The result is noth­ing short of spectacular.

Pedro Costa’s Horse Mon­ey, the Por­tuguese filmmaker’s first fic­tion fea­ture in over eight years, crescen­dos with an intense­ly cere­bral 20-minute sequence set inside an ele­va­tor in which a flood of dia­logue works to col­lapse an entire history’s worth of per­son­al and polit­i­cal tragedy in one vir­tu­oso dis­play of accu­mu­lat­ed aggres­sion. Unde­ni­ably brac­ing, the scene – a slight­ly reworked ver­sion of Costa’s 2012 short Sweet Exor­cism (orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured in the Cen­tro Histórico omnibus film) – is but the final and most vio­lent exam­ple of the film’s fore­most alle­gor­i­cal con­ceit, that of indoor space as phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of repressed cul­tur­al memory.

In Costa’s cin­e­ma, the act of rep­re­sen­ta­tion is an act of exor­cism in itself – or, as he put it in an inter­view with Cin­e­ma Scope mag­a­zine, a means to ful­ly leave the past behind: Some peo­ple say they make films to remem­ber. I think we make films to for­get.” It’s a dec­la­ra­tion as weary yet sober-mind­ed as this film is unsur­pris­ing, espe­cial­ly in light of Costa’s intim­i­dat­ing oeu­vre, which car­ries the weight of both cul­tur­al and cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry in every deeply felt frame. Star­ring Ven­tu­ra, the real-life Cape Verdean lead of this film’s loose pre­de­ces­sor, 2006’s Colos­sal Youth, as a light­ly drama­tised ver­sion of him­self, Costa’s lat­est fol­lows his ever-enig­mat­ic col­lab­o­ra­tor through a suc­ces­sion of scenes and set­tings with an air of the pur­ga­to­r­i­al – a sense which the direc­tor encour­ages and exag­ger­ates by way of abstract nar­ra­tive chronol­o­gy and high­ly sym­bol­ic depic­tions of insti­tu­tion­al spaces.

When we meet Ven­tu­ra, he’s lum­ber­ing down a dim­ly lit, cave-like cor­ri­dor in his under­wear, before awak­en­ing in a hos­pi­tal bed sur­round­ed by infantry­men who speak of the vio­lence tran­spir­ing just beyond the walls of this uniden­ti­fied san­i­tar­i­um. Ven­tu­ra is vis­i­bly sick. His hands shake, he strug­gles to walk. When he speaks he often returns to the mem­o­ry of a hor­rif­ic 1975 knife fight, from which he still bears phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal scars. From here he pro­ceeds to encounter many mys­te­ri­ous fig­ures, each an appar­ent man­i­fes­ta­tion of a past friend, acquain­tance, or col­league. The most strik­ing of these is Vitali­na, a fel­low Cape Verdean trans­plant who has arrived for her husband’s funer­al, an event we nev­er see but which is delib­er­at­ed upon at length when she and Ven­tu­ra meet on a rooftop in the dead of night, the only light ema­nat­ing unnat­u­ral­ly from the win­dows of an adja­cent apart­ment building.

It’s evi­dent in its ellip­ti­cal pre­sen­ta­tion and some­what episod­ic con­struc­tion that Horse Money’s nar­ra­tive tran­spires in a realm beyond tra­di­tion­al notions of real­i­ty. The film could thus be read any num­ber of ways: as a por­trait of the after­life, or a death rat­tle hal­lu­ci­na­tion, a vision of Ven­tu­ra as he pass­es from one exis­tence to the next, or as a wak­ing night­mare pre­cip­i­tat­ed by years of unre­lent­ing trau­ma. What­ev­er the inter­pre­ta­tion, Ventura’s jour­ney feels inex­orable, pro­ceed­ing through a suc­ces­sion of spaces that are recog­nis­able yet gut­ted of any tan­gi­ble asso­ci­a­tions. Hos­pi­tals, cat­a­combs, forests, ware­hous­es – they func­tion­al­ly cor­re­spond to every­day con­cep­tions of a trou­bled psy­che, but fail to offer even the cold­est of comforts.

The film’s large­ly noc­tur­nal set­tings and stark, chiaroscuro light­ing design, cou­pled with the actors’ ghost­ly incan­ta­tions and gen­er­al­ly defeat­ed demeanours, sug­gest char­ac­ter­is­tics of the hor­ror genre. Costa’s affin­i­ty for the style’s more out­ré́ prac­ti­tion­ers – Jacques Tourneur, Edgar G Ulmer, Charles Laughton – has long been appar­ent (his debut fea­ture, O Sangue from 1989, set its tale of sib­ling strug­gle in a mono­chro­mat­ic waste­land that could have eas­i­ly been shot on mid­cen­tu­ry stu­dio sets). With Horse Mon­ey, how­ev­er, such aes­thet­ic incli­na­tions reach new heights of expres­sion­is­tic ele­gance. Cos­ta frames each shot like a sta­t­ic mur­al, drap­ing fig­ures and objects in gulfs of dark­ness which spill forth from beyond the mea­sure of the frame. These dig­i­tal images, beau­ti­ful and grotesque, con­jure a sense of apoc­a­lyp­tic grandeur at eye lev­el, cap­tur­ing dilap­i­dat­ed inte­ri­ors at impos­si­ble angles and moon­lit clear­ings with dis­arm­ing austerity.

It all builds to the final encounter in the hos­pi­tal ele­va­tor, in which an unknown, undead, unmov­ing solid­er – a kind of liv­ing stat­ue – speaks to Ven­tu­ra through the voic­es of the dear­ly depart­ed. A ghost of the Car­na­tion Rev­o­lu­tion and a cipher of Portugal’s post-war indus­tri­al dec­i­ma­tion, the sol­dier stands at the lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive thresh­old of Ventura’s spir­i­tu­al trans­fer­ence. Where he’s arrived and to where he’ll pro­ceed at the film’s end is unclear, but the star­tling final image, in which Ven­tu­ra and the weapon which so painful­ly haunts his mem­o­ry find them­selves stacked with­in the same cramped frame, sug­gest the wounds are far from healed.

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