Colossal Youth

Ventura is an elderly immigrant from Cape Verde. Fontainhas, on the edge of Lisbon, is being demolished and its residents are being moved into newly built white blocks. Ventura goes back and forth between the two places, visiting people he calls his children; none of them is his child. The same matters come round on every visit: work, illness, a letter written years ago. Pedro Costa directs. It is the third of his Fontainhas films, grouped with Ossos and In Vanda's Room. The method is unusual. Costa shot with a digital camera, nearly alone, over a long period; the cast are real residents of the neighbourhood playing situations close to their own lives. The scenes were repeated many times and the take chosen is usually the most exhausted one. The framing is from below and the people stand like monuments; the contrast between the dark rooms and the blank white walls of the new buildings is the film's actual argument. The letter is at the centre. Ventura recites a love letter from memory; its source is the words of a worker in exile, and the film uses it as poetry. It runs close to two and a half hours and has no plot. It screened in competition at the 2006 Cannes film festival and divided the audience. Who it is for: viewers who follow contemporary art cinema and Costa's Fontainhas films. Who it is not for: almost nothing happens, the scenes are very long, and the film explains nothing at any point.