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new film feature 2006
Colossal
Youth
(Juventude em marcha)
(screened at the
2006 London Film Festival on Friday 27th October)
| NFT
2 was almost full - not so difficult for the studio sized screen 2
of the much down graded NFT of recent
years. Pedro Costas film is a highly contemporary
take on the realist genre, mixing fiction and documentary. Set in Portugals'
Lisbon slums it presents its actors and locations in such a way
as to let us scrutinise the location as well as the stories and digressions
of its largely immigrant, impoverished community. Simple, virtually static
tableaux, whose colour, light and shadow frame the real lives of those
often forgotten people, a type who move just out of view, belying their
number and economic contribution to such life all over Europe,
(certainly out of range of most of the audience here tonight, deliberately
or simply the result of selective vision of all that is 'uncomfortable').
However, even the novelty of the unfamiliar proved insufficient lure judging by the dribble of escapees through the nearest exit door tonight. This was their loss, however. Despite the intensity of its long brooding takes, difficult in the unendurble heat, above all Colossal Youth moves beyond the normal cine experience. In doing this it implies that if you are to truly broach the often forgotten, nonetheless impossibly rigid constraints of everday experience and further than this, if you are to attempt its representation via cinematic art, it will have to be in a form other than the entertainment 'movie' experience so favoured by the London Film Festival. David Somerset, fiba Editor, 28 October, 2006 ________________________________________________________________ |
| Colossal
Youth (Juventude em marcha) Portugal/France/Switzerland 2006, 155 mins Producer: Francisco Villa-Lobos Screenplay: Pedro Costa Cinematographer: Pedro Costa, Leonardo Simões Editor: Pedro Marques Sound: Olivier Blanc Principal Cast: Ventura, Vanda Duarte, Beatriz Duarte, Gustavo Sumpta, Cila Cardoso, Isabel Cardoso, Alberto Barros "Lento" Petro Costa (right) |
 |
Lisbon's
Fontaínhas neighbourhood no longer
exists. It has been demolished and many of the inhabitants whom filmmaker
Pedro Costa portrayed in his two previous
films, Bones and In Vanda's
Room, have been forced to move to Casal Boba,
a housing development far from the city centre. The third instalment in
his series about those living on the city's outskirts, Colossal
Youth offers a multi-layered commentary on gentrification, loss,
isolation and rejection. In this hybrid of fiction and documentary, Costa
follows Ventura (Ventura),
a slum dweller and victim of this forced relocation - and a gentle soul
- on his rounds of the city, visiting the people and places that he loves.
After thirty years of marriage, Ventura's wife, Clotilde (Isabel Cardoso), leaves him, declaring that she wants to return to Cape Verde. Alone, he focuses his energy on caring for his surrogate "children," vainly trying to procure a decent home for his fellow slum-dwellers in the new development. He visits Vanda (the heroin addict, now clean, from Costa's previous films, played by Vanda Duarte). Enveloped by her boundless energy, Ventura sits quietly as she dives into a series of monologues. He only really opens up with Lento (Alberto Barros "Lento"), whom he teaches the poem he has written for Clotilde: "I wish I could give you a hundred thousand cigarettes, a dozen of those fancy dresses". And he visits Lisbon's famous Gulbenkian Foundation to bask in the beauty of the art, finding transcendence through culture. A guard ruins the moment, asking him to move because he smells - it seems his kind are excluded from what is considered public patrimony.
Each shot of Colossal Youth is so exquisitely framed, the film feels at times like a walk through a museum. Costa follows the shafts of light, creating stirring portraits of his subjects; at times, a saintly halo seems to surround Ventura. Despite his poverty, he always wears a suit and maintains a quiet dignity. Through this noble, hopeful protagonist, intent on rising above the squalor of his surroundings, Costa illuminates the belief that, despite so many ills, there is still a lot of beauty in the world - we just need to look for it. - Diana Sanchez, Toronto Film Festival _________________________________________________________________ |
Pedro Costa on the community which he films: "This marks the third time that I've filmed the community of the Fontainhas quarter, in the suburbs of Lisbon. The first time, with Bones, was a discovery of these people whom we slowly approached and awkwardly said hello to. The second time, for In Vanda's Room, I concentrated on the life of Vanda Duarte. There was the desire to go farther into our knowledge of those residents. There was more observation, more intimacy. It was a kind of documentary. For Colossal Youth, the quarter is now destroyed and I followed the life of one of its residents, Ventura. I wanted the film to resemble a kind of western, but I quickly gave up the idea. It is a film which delves into the central figure, with whom I've worked hard for over two years." Pedro Costa on the film's themes: "In the title Colossal Youth there is, of course, a message of hope for young people. It is a film about a man with a heavy past, a man with ghosts. A picture which also deals with the filial relationship. There are many messages and metaphors, it seems to me. It is a story of fidelity to the birth of a quarter, and Ventura greatly contributes to this story of fidelity." Francisco Villa-Lobos on the preparations for the project: "The feature film was difficult to set up. It required very long hours with a shoot in digital video, but we had the time necessary to instill it with life. We had excellent travelling companions so that this ambitious project would see the light of day, notably the enormous backing of the financiers." Pedro Costa on the sound work: "There are very rich ties in this film, with passionate people, there is a tension that must be heard. I tried to create a movement of sound which underscores the weight and tension of things." _____________________________________________________________ Above pictures are from Cannes web site at http://www.festival-cannes.fr/films/fiche_film.php?langue=6002&id_film=4360212 <http://www.festivalcannes.fr/films/fiche_film.php?langue=6002&id_film=4360212 |
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