The director, Pedro Costa, is in Montevideo, and is introduced at the screening of Vitalina Varela by the Portuguese ambassador, who informs the audience of his ignorance regarding his native film industry. The ambassador is a portly figure, who then takes his seat for the two hours of Vitalina Varela and is perhaps the one who snores lightly, dreaming of the next chapter in the Fast and the Furious franchise. Because Costa’s films are not an easy watch. He is a painterly director, who adores the play of light on the screen. For much of the time in both films, this screen is bathed in near darkness, with a chiselled light illuminating quadrants of the protagonists’ faces. In both films the eponymous protagonist is a black immigrant to Lisbon from the Cape Verde islands and their colour becomes doubly significant for how Costa chooses to light his films, accentuating the darkness, meaning their faces are crepuscular, rearing out of the shadows. The narrative has a similar quality. Very little is clear in this world, much is opaque. Tiny hints of connections between the films, which are part of a series, are occasionally discharged, as Vitalina reappears in Ventura’s film and some of the dots start to join up. But on the whole, the viewer finds themselves seeking to glean shards of meaning from jumbled elements, and it is a taxing mission which runs the risk of leaving his audience in the dark.
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