Locarno Film Review: ‘Vitalina Varela’

Frequently beautiful compositions and the theatrical use of a fierce kind of artifice have long been the hallmarks of Portuguese auteur, regarded by a small but influential group of aesthetes as one of the great filmmakers of our era.

The problem isn’t the lack of a story but rather its piecemeal nature — less narrative would have made the film feel truer to a certain kind of avant-garde cinema, and perversely could have increased an emotional connection much in the way that studying a powerful photograph allows the mind to imagine an infinite number of possibilities.

Most of the dialogue in the film comes in monologue form, with barely any conversational interchange. From these, we learn that Vitalina was married to Joaquim in 1982, sometime after which they began to build a house together in Cape Verde. He went to Lisbon, came back once, and then completely disappeared, never getting in contact again. Vitalina learns he was in jail at some point, but never discovers why he left her without a word.

The addition of an aged priest with Parkinson’s brings together two independent, brokenhearted souls: her trapped in a life of hardship denied the love of a husband still recalled with fondness, and him bound by a religious calling starved of a flock. In one of the few dialogue exchanges, he tells her he lost his faith in this darkness, but she berates him: Men only take other men into consideration, leaving women unsupported and kept in the shadows.

Perhaps none of Costa’s films have ever reveled in darkness as much as this one, shot almost entirely at night or in dwellings that allow for only sharp-edged shafts of light to illuminate the dingy surroundings that literally crumble onto Varela’s head. Two brief flashback scenes in Cape Verde offer the sole vision of blue skies, creating a jarring contrast with the inky blackness everywhere else.Reviewed at Locarno Film Festival , Aug. 16, 2019. Running time: 124 MIN.: Director: Pedro Costa.

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