Never a line was drawn more squiggly between life and fiction than the imaginary one that connects all Pedro Costa’s films—life being that of his model characters, the people his oeuvre is the visual log of a continuous collaboration and a mutual growth, whether human or creative. That very line, thin or thick or blurred, is the mark that defines Costa’s cinema as it finds its shape between the narrative and the documentary, to eventually land on the more stylised approach of his recent works.If on its ragged surface Ossos deals with inner demons and outer hardships, underneath it seems to dig into the different depths of the theme of memory. ‘Give her a kiss, she remembers you,’ we hear say at some point out of the blue. And as that line stays suspended in thin air, almost trapped in a cage of bricks, more connections arise. It is ultimately the prospect of memory what looms over the desperate denial of two tormented parents. But it is also memory what the film itself is capturing of a district soon to be destroyed. And it’s again memory what an inescapable fate has already made of its inhabitants—one more to be rejected by the relentless noise produced by our society.
