Vitalina Varela | Little White Lies

Vitali­na Varela

04 Mar 2020 / Released: 06 Mar 2020

Dark, brooding figure seated in dim lighting.
Dark, brooding figure seated in dim lighting.
4

Anticipation.

A new Costa is an event – not “event” like a party, “event” like an earthquake.

4

Enjoyment.

An ideal introduction to Costa’s work – don’t be intimidated.

5

In Retrospect.

Rich, mysterious, rigorous and generous.

Por­tuguese mas­ter Pedro Cos­ta charts a Cape Verdean émigré’s jour­ney through the out­skirts of Lisbon.

Pedro Costa’s films are epic in scope, begin­ning with the light­ing; pushed to extrem­i­ties of bright­ness and dark­ness which sug­gest the ori­gins of all human dra­ma. Noc­tur­nal frames are so volup­tuous­ly dark – he films in what Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy refers to as, the Bible-black predawn,” when the only ones stir­ring are the maids at the bus stop – that you have to scan the shad­ows to see where peo­ple begin and their sur­round­ings end. Make the effort.

In low-angle chiaroscuro close-ups, peo­ple appear as if trans­fixed by flood­lights, and deliv­er husky solil­o­quies derived from the sto­ries Cos­ta learns from his non­vo­ca­tion­al actors. Just as elo­quent are faces like that of Vitali­na Varela’s title char­ac­ter, played by a woman of the same name, who arrives in Por­tu­gal from Cape Verde too late for her husband’s funer­al. Against her jet-black widow’s weeds of leather jack­et and head scarf, the planes of her face, the dome of her head, the ridge of her nose appear cast in relief. She is a mon­u­ment to herself.

After 1997’s Ossos, made with res­i­dents of Lisbon’s Fontaínhas slum, Cos­ta shift­ed to a more stripped-down method, with a tiny crew and more col­lab­o­ra­tive nar­ra­tives for the semi­doc­u­men­tary In Vanda’s Room, from 2002. He got clos­er to the world just as it was being demol­ished, with Fontaínhas’ res­i­dents relo­cat­ed to the bru­tal­ist midrise tow­ers we see in 2006’s Colos­sal Youth. A sta­t­ic cam­era, slow pac­ing, sculp­tur­al fram­ings and Car­avag­gio light­ing grant Costa’s char­ac­ters root­ed­ness, even as he also acknowl­edges their displacement.

Peo­ple in Cos­ta films car­ry many times and places inside them. In 2014’s Horse Mon­ey, his totemic actor Ven­tu­ra wan­ders a hos­pi­tal, lost in a maze of mem­o­ries of post­colo­nial migra­tion and encoun­ters with his exploit­ed com­rades. This includes Vitali­na Varela, in her first appear­ance in a Cos­ta film, as a Cape Verdean arriv­ing in Lis­bon after news of her husband’s death, sug­gest­ing that Horse Money’s elu­sive chronol­o­gy also extends into the future, to this new film.

Cos­ta rein­vents his style with every film; Vitali­na Varela fea­tures his most lin­ear, leg­i­ble plot (a word not used light­ly). Vitali­na dis­em­barks from the plane, bare­foot, in Por­tu­gal at last to set­tle the affairs of the hus­band who left her behind decades ago. In the con­crete shan­ty­town of Cova da Moura on Lisbon’s out­skirts, weary men hov­er like crows, and tell her of her husband’s lone­ly, alien­at­ed life in the for­eign land that now holds his body, over the four decades she spent resent­ing him for aban­don­ing his home for a new one he nev­er found.

Vitali­na Varela is an inver­sion of Gra­ham Greene’s The Third Man’, with a stranger in a strange land on the trail of an old friend, hear­ing new sto­ries that grad­u­al­ly soft­en her heart to him. In anoth­er Greene-ish touch, Ven­tu­ra appears as the anguished parish priest, his qua­ver­ing faith rep­re­sent­ed by the same tremor that afflict­ed him in Horse Money.

It’s simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sad to see Ven­tu­ra – whom we’ve known since Colos­sal Youth – as his body wanes, and remark­able to see the per­for­mance he gives, imbu­ing new fic­tions with haunt­ing depth. Costa’s cin­e­ma is down-to-earth and big­ger than life.

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