Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth (2006) is a shadowy study in exile, set in and starring a Lisbon neighbourhood of Cape Verdean migrant workers. Ventura is the damaged, dignified old man who fills nearly every scene. With a lurching walk and disturbed, sad stare, dictating letters to relatives who no longer exist and lending an ear to the local heroin-addict mum he calls his daughter, he’s alienated yet loving. “The ceiling is full of spiders,” he imaginatively complains to a letting agent, as he refuses yet another pristine impersonal flat in the new block the neighbourhood is being moved down the line to, displacement their permanent condition.
Costa’s approach at first seems disconcerting, as scenes and characters are laid down like cards, without explanation. Added to the chiaroscuro beauty of quiet conversations lit by candles worthy of Old Dutch Masters, and still lifes of Ventura lounging in the languid Portuguese sun, it’s no wonder the Tate gave the director a retrospective.
But this isn’t art cinema fit only for galleries. The moment when Ventura reaches out a firm hand to still a friend who’s making the stylus skip on an old 45 of a Cape Verdean anthem of liberation from Portugal resonates with dignified realism. Independence Day is when he met his wife, too, in a lost, hopeful place of colour and life. And the letter he keeps dictating echoes those written to loved ones by victims of Hitler and Portuguese dictator Salazar’s concentration camps. Over two and a half hours, Costa’s contemplative rhythm and still gaze compose a searching portrait of wounded, forgotten souls.
This Masters of Cinema edition from Axiom typically includes three Costa short films deepening Colossal Youth’s world, an extensive booklet of essays, and an interview with the director.
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