26/05/2006

An immersion into a purist and minimalist auteur cinema greeted audiences at yesterday evening’s press screening of the first-ever competition title Juventude em Marcha [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Portugal’s Pedro Costa.

Continuing the narrative lines in Ossos (1997) and In Vanda’s Room (2000), the director returns yet again to Fontainhas, a poor neighbourhood in the northeast of Lisbon, where old housing blocks are being demolished and its residents relocated to modern apartment blocks.

This time, Costa follows the wanderings of Ventura, a retired builder killing time, whose wife has left him. On his travels, Ventura meets ex-junkie Vanda Duarte (the main character in Costa’s last film), a card player and a museum caretaker. He listens to these young characters recount their lives, each at their own pace, treating them as he would his own children.

This also evokes his own past, a strange family re-formed in slow motion. Ventura goes back to find each member at various points throughout the film, which is highlighted by the repetition of passages from an imaginary letter that always begins: “My love, being together again will make our life beautiful, for at least another thirty years. Meanwhile, I will take a breathe of fresh air and come back full of strength.”.

In a cross between documentary and fiction, dream and reality, the Portuguese director weaves his own style, which tends increasingly more towards the essential, to produce something that resembles a painting as much as it does a film.

The splendid plastic composition of the (mainly still) shots into which the characters enter and exit reveals talented lighting (created by Costa himself), in particular the chiaroscuro games. Capturing the characters’ slightest movements in the several minute-long sequences, with Juventude em Marcha Costa offers a radical film that is hypnotic or petrifying, depending on how able audiences are to immerse themselves in his world.

Produced by Contracosta Produções (the director’s company) and co-produced by Films de l’Etranger (France) and Unlimited and Ventura Films (Switzerland), the €1m film received backing from Arte France Cinéma and Portugeuse national broadcasters RTP and RTS. International sales are being handled by Memento Film.

(Translated from French)