We open on a dark alleyway. To the right, elevated from the street level, a cemetery. The crosses loom above us. Vitalina Varela is an immersive journey into the depths of loss, its silent misery. Despite having the same elliptical narrative of Cavalo Dinheiro, its clearer storyline makes the characters immediately relatable and the experience more poignant. But this is not in the slightest accidental, or a flaw of the former for that matter. Through a process of passionate human discovery rather than one of cinematic manipulation, Costa seems to shape his films to the inner truth of their characters. Whereas Cavalo Dinheiro is based on a fictionalised version of the real Ventura, who according to Costa is incapable of recounting his life, Vitalina Varela reflects the lucidity of her eponymous protagonist’s tragic recollections.
Pedro Costa tells the struggles of an incredible life through little moments of such intensity to be possibly regarded as expressionistic. Vitalina arrives to Portugal from her native Cabo Verde barefoot. Her silhouette dangerously stands on the edge of the open door while the stairs are yet to attach. Nobody is there to assist, no other passengers. Tears, or blood, run down her ankles. Hers is the confidence of who defeated by fate challenges it to dare further. ‘Nothing left for you here, Vitalina.’ Wherever you go, grief will follow. Vitalina.
Once in the flat that was supposed to become theirs, her late husband’s bright yellow hi-vis breaks the bronze dimness of a never-ending night like a ghost, and a recurring visual aggression to the warm tints of the film.
To a similar cringing effect and a subdued witty sense of irony, contrast is sought through the secondary characters. A man flushing the loo in the background while candles are fixed by an impromptu home altar, or a priest loudly blowing his nose after confessing the one soul still coming to the church. ‘Seven cans of tuna, five euros? (beat) Excuse me, my condolences,’ says a mourner to an appalled Vitalina. Stoic, firm as a statue of herself.
Costa’s gorgeous ode to another dispossessed divinity is a dark place in ruins where faith is lost but another is to be found. For the art of cinema, and cinema as a true form of art.
