Rent Vitalina Varela (2019)

Film-making of the highest order. - Vitalina Varela review by CP Customer

'Vitalina Varela' is the latest film by one of World Cinema's contemporary greats, Pedro Costa. As such it is definitely his most fully realised work to date. It is quite simply a thing of deep, dark beauty.

Nearly every sequence is framed by impenetrable shadow, with the centre of the screen bathed in a pool of subtle light. Costa is a true master of lighting, down to the finest detail. You can freeze the picture at any point and see a superbly composed artwork. No wonder it takes Costa a long time to shoot his films.

The film is the true story of Vitalina Varela's attempts to understand her late husband's life and death in Lisbon. She arrives there from her home in the Cape Verde Islands. The twilight, becalmed world of the Cape Verdeans in Portugal will be familiar to anyone who has seen Costa's previous films.

Vitalina herself is rarely off screen, and she is a powerful presence, with a strong, intelligent face that commands the long, lingering takes.

Love and death are the key themes and it is well worth watching the Q&A with Costa that is included in the special features.

My one regret is that it is hard to see Costa's films on the big screen. I'd love to see this film on a quality system, with good sound and a visual capacity that does justice to the use of light.

Grief, Given Walls and Shadows - Vitalina Varela review by griggs

Beautiful in the way a bruise is beautiful — unasked-for and a little alarming. Pedro Costa shoots Vitalina Varela like every frame costs something: faces dragged from darkness, rooms that look like chapels after the electricity gave up on God. I loved the look of it. The trouble is, I also spent chunks of it wondering whether I was watching cinema or being punished by a church wall.

Vitalina arrives in Lisbon three days after her husband’s funeral — too late for answers, too late for the life she was owed. Costa doesn’t tell a story so much as place you inside its aftermath. Grief here doesn’t scream; it waits in paperwork, silence and architecture, the residue of a man who left and never quite explained himself.

At its best, this is devastating. Vitalina is too specific, too wounded, too much herself to be turned into a symbol, and the film gives her dignity without pretending to explain her. It doesn’t feel like poverty tourism; it feels like grief being given walls, shadows and a locked door.

I struggled to stay with it at times — there were stretches where I felt locked out rather than drawn deeper in. But it got under my skin. I admired it, resisted it often, and was quietly flattened by the end.

I am not a director.... - Vitalina Varela review by DF

Undoubtedly Vitalina Varela rates 5 stars but for me there is a paradox; visually the movie is beautiful but i do think that the director, Pedro Costa, somehow overplayed his hand and failed his characters leaving them hidden in a virtual dark hopelessness. For the viewer it is difficult and discomforting to limagine the lives being portrayed; their misery seems complete, their destiny sealed. We know of the desperate situation of exploited migrant workers and this movie pulls no punches in its depiction, but the only message I got was despair (maybe the intention of the director ?) There is some ‘affirmation’ in the the marvellously self-portrayed Vitalina; a woman, in spite of her hardships, determined to live -  and to see the roof fixed. The fragile communality of the barrio people is all they have in life and death and their local Catholic priest is disintegrating because of remorse over previous failures. The movie’s cinematography is outstanding; fixed camera scenes with lighting reminiscent of Flemish old masters; all beautiful and to that extent rating the film 5 stars, but beyond that, I think the director fails because he has trapped his characters hidden in a sort of paradoxical beautiful obscurity. I have a feeling that the depiction of the characters would have fared better with less fussy black and white camera work but then again I am not a director!