Nella stanza di Vanda

I would love to say, like I read on this very site yesterday, before watching the film, that this is 'the best drug abuse film' but it really is not.

I don't want to come across as if I am saying this is lighthearted or lessen the impact of it in any way. It Is a harrowing study of some pretty messed up people. A woman who is immersed in drug-taking and nothing else in life. The people around her, everyone with the same story or problem, they ALL take drugs. It's sad to see.

Somewhere, behind those eyes you can see a pretty woman who must have had dreams once, her sister too...they are beautiful women gone sick and twisted.

I do agree that this film should be shown everywhere though, this is what drugs do to you! Or perhaps that should say, this is -what society that doesn't care does to you?!

Watch this. You will never see another film like it and for better or worse, you need to know it exists.

Unsurprisingly, it's pretty dull in those four walls. I say unsurprisingly because when it comes to serious boredom junkies are right up there with bankers, dentists, and interpretive dancers. Just a veritable cornucopia of solipsism with its attendant staring off into space, desultory, pointless conversation, coughing (lots of that), yelling, mumbling to oneself and more staring off into space. And, if that doesn't get the point across, director Pedro Costa thoughtfully provides the viewer with copious shots of Lisbon slum dwelling demolition. I lasted about an hour and fifteen and would have pulled the plug sooner had it not been for some of the most perversely lovely cinematography this side of a Caravaggio or a Zurburan.

Bottom line: Next time I wish to visit Portugal vicariously I'll crack open a can of sardines. C plus.

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.

You could plainfully say this is a movie about drugs and people taking drugs but then you'd have to take a closer look and another and yet another. In Vanda's Room is not about consumption of the body, it's about what roots us here on this earth. But is it real life? You have to wander about the nature and relationship of the director with all those characters. Are they even real? They don't seem like real people, sometimes it seems they're acting, sometimes it's real life. Is this a documentary or is this fiction? What's the nature of life? You'll find out you get a lot more questions than answers at the end of this fabulous piece of art. This is the story of an perfectly organized world suffering a true invasion - my machines who come to tear the Fontaínhas neighbourhood down, by men who think this is a junkies place. It's a world of rules as they come, it's a world of emotional need like everyone else's. It's just those people take drugs but drugs are a way of searching for care and comfort. This is a place of people and lives of people who want a place to call their own, despite whats inside. Amidst drug consumption and beyond consumption there are people who mourn the loss of their homes, who gets sad for feeling unrooted. While Fontainhas implode, so is everyone's own world falls apart, slowly, despite their senseless existence - apparently. They've got a strategy, a way to survive, a way to love, a way to cope. In Vanda's room some of the Fontaínhas people go in and Vanda also moves around Fontaínhas. This is not a movie about a neighbourhood and it is, it's about the micro and the macro focus, with specific and universal feelings. In the end, we are all a house who implodes against will.

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