Nella stanza di Vanda

Pedro Costa´s «No Quarto da Vanda» is a dramatic picture of our present reality with real people that live day after day trying to find a way to explain their actual state, as drug addicts. It is also a film about generations full of addictions and social problems that don´t have any solution yet... Powerful, contagious and extremely real this is «No Quarto da Vanda» , an absolute masterpiece! 10/10

Vanda Duarte is a heroin addict living in Fontainhas, a slum district on the outskirts of Lisbon. She's the nominal star of this film, playing herself (as is everyone else in the film) usually smoking heroin and/or talking to someone else in her bedroom. The film follows her and other residents of the district taking drugs, working makeshift jobs and living in cramped, dilapidated rooms. There's no plot per se, but threads emerge as we return to the same people over the course of nearly three hours. A way of life emerges, and one that's threatened as we see the neighborhood slowing being torn down around them in the interests of urban renewal.

A three hour film with no real plot told in long static shots is a hard sell for many folks, but I found this to compelling and frequently mesmerizing. Usually I want a film to tell me a story, but sometimes taking me somewhere very different and dropping me in is enough ... and this film really drops you right in.

There's real art to this too. Pedro Costa composes his shots beautifully and uses minimal, natural lighting to create visuals not unlike Renaissance paintings. People sit in small pools of light with fairly vivid colors surrounded by pools of utter blackness. It creates real beauty out of squalor.

Vanda Duarte is a heroin addict in Lisbon. She and her family live in a crumbling building in the slums. It's a fictional story filmed in the documentary style. It's as realistic as fake gets. I would wonder if I didn't know the truth of the fictionalization. Maybe I would think that this is the real thing. It is rather long at almost three hours. It's basically an experimental film but it's a really good one. I'm willing to sit through the three hours but some of this is a bit too dark. The filmmaker obviously did not want to use too much artificial lighting. There is some great shadow use. The biggest trade-off is that some of this film comes off as a black blank. The setting is terrific. They are using the real places. The drug use looks real although I don't have the experience to judge. All in all, this is good work.

I found myself wondering, 'what is real in this film, and what did the director add, if anything?' It is a portrait of everyone, not just 'lowly' drug users. And no, the reviewer who claimed a 'well trained dog' could film a movie such as this is probably a 12 year old, especially since many scenes do not take place in a)a structure being demolished, b) many characters depicted are not using drugs, and etc etc... just a terrible review from someone whose favorite movie is probably 'Thor'. I also loved the soundscapes - all of the noise of commerce, music, and yes, demolition. I think it is interesting to witness the visual transformation that occurs within this trilogy of films. Very poetic and empathetic; loving, almost.

Dark and intriguing as a hidden meandering well and beautiful like Venus on the half shell, this portraiture of humans living seamlessly in the safety of their adopted home had no real future in mind as they struggle to make ends meet day to day with a grace perhaps given by God himself. Their acceptance of unwavering need to support each other and eventually their need for altering the reality of being dug out of their lair-like homes seems to squeeze the youth and humor out of their souls and sadly transports it to the mysterious parchment they so avidly smoke as the ruination begins outside.

Oddly, it reminds me of certain times in my own childhood.