Colossal Youth
The final entry in Pedro Costa's Vanda series finds Ventura, a statuesque older man from the Fountaínhas slum, scouting a unit in a new government housing project for his disparate "children," including the methadone-dependent Vanda from the previous films. The shots are studiously static and the narrative is hard to follow, but the characters--all played by nonprofessional actors from the community--are obstinate and fascinating. Ultimately, the string that binds the sprawling, 155-minute film is not the ennobling lighting and pretty digital cinematography, but an evocative letter home to Cape Verde that one resident has committed to heart, like a poem or a prayer.
By Annie Wagner
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