Dans la chambre de Vanda

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.