130 / BD 30 Vitalina Varela

[knives]

He's actually done a surprising amount of genre projects. Casa de lava is an I Walked With a Zombie adaptation for example and Ossos is clearly working within a teenage rebellion genre while Horse Money is a ghost story mixed with psychological thriller to me. He perhaps hasn't been blatant about it for a while, but its easy to pick up his technique to a genre especially one as art inspiring as noir.

[soundchaser]

Knives, if it helps reassure you at all...

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Ventura is very much an actor playing a role in this one. I never got the sense here that he was being manipulated.

[knives]

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I felt that was so in Horse Money as well. My issue was with the elevator scene in that movie which specifically preyed upon his dementia.

[Bikey]

Pedro Costa's sublime VITALINA VARELA makes its UK online premiere from May 19th at MUBI UK.

[therewillbeblus]

Well Costa has finally made a film to win me over, though it shouldn't be a surprise as he conveys the experience of how one copes without a cathartic path to expel grief. The boiling of this emotional bloating inside Varela leads to contemplations on loneliness, resentment, and living with death’s aggressively silent presence in existential rut. Costa’s steady camera and patient detailing slows life down to make us feel every exchange as a meditative presence, and keeps a neutrality of calmness to harness the continual transformations of internal tone that haunt Varela under our very nose; like a cool sun by which all the planets orbit.

I can see hearthesilence’s comparison to noir, as this inability to relieve herself of enigmatic weight causes suffering that is adaptably displaced onto searching for meaning. It’s a one-way ticket, a moody consequence of dissolving the self down to a single motive, and yet here it’s more powerful than any noir: the meaning behind experience universal and singular. Death, loss, survival, a perception of wasted time resulting in regret, and perseverance bypassing acceptance toward demanding tangibility with agency.

These broad ideas hit me deep, but it’s also Varela’s personalized account that involved me beyond myself into this unique narrative. And yet, in Varela’s specific circumstances reflects our own regrets, sacrifices, anger, and self-pity - that awful shameful feeling that none of us want to admit is there. Varela sure doesn’t, as a strong, stoic survivor, but it’s there. Costa validates this: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I waver on Costa because I struggle with the fine line between manipulation and empowerment his style and filmmaking choices signify. Here he hits a very sensitive area that manifested as total empathy and curiosity without overbearing invasiveness. Varela is like a film noir protagonist who has already failed to greet their fatalistic finish in step with the existential goal that would coincide with death (after 25 years of being on the trail!), and instead of physical death, she lived on without a blueprint for meaning as a walking form of the spiritual deceased. This makes it a noir and a ghost story, but one where she’s alive feeling dissociated from the structure of her life, not exactly aided by being in a new country without familiarity or supports.

There is something that lends itself to horror about this predicament, and it could be emblematic of hell or a lucid nightmare. It’s also beautiful, breathing deep levels of oxygen into tranquil spaces that leave opportunities for reflection and acceptance. Whether Varela takes them each time isn’t the point; what matters is that they’re there. This is as much a celebration of life as an allegory for death of the soul. It’s about the kinetic energy between exerting the will and letting go. The entire composite also speaks to the experience of life itself - trapped in a pit of nebulous circumstances where philosophy cannot cure emotional dysregulation, and we must endure; and in that endurance we find meaning.

However, this film’s ending makes it clear that this doesn’t mean harmony or catharsis, but a paradoxical license to our subjective interpretation of the cosmos, and a fluidity of surrender to forces outside of us. The development of a worldview to help us cope doesn’t mean a wholly optimistic support.

This makes me want to go back and re-evaluate my position on Costa. I’m not sure if I’m missing the mark, but while there is an almost unavoidable exploitative lens here, the darkening of scenery to light the characters as oil paintings accentuates their place in their milieus, and breaks down all dishonest influence to reveal a pure emphasis on honest expression. Through this artificial tool comes the utmost respect for the subjects themselves, and thus unconditional affirmation for their emotional experiences; literally and figuratively illuminating their humanity.

Speaking of manipulation though, I have a question about the ending for those who have seen the film:

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Did Varela actually die (which means the figure approaching her grave at the end is a ghost)? Or was that “she” just a sike-out from Costa?

I prefer the former reading, with her presence cutting through the exaggerated realism of the film as a spirit. The final shot would play the same though, assuming that’s her on top of the house, participating in life and working on herself after muted inspiration lifted her out of hopelessness just enough to turn attention outward. It’s a beautiful kind of existential absurdism by way of Camus’ take on Sisyphus, only planted in corporeal context in a gravely-serious manner. "Build your house well."

[dda1996a]

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I have no reason to believe she died, as there is no reason for it to happen - she's very much alive (both in real life, and she is never showed dying), and the graves are holes she dug in the scene before. I thought it was her way of helping and paying back Venture, and helping the other dead as a way of freeing herself from her husband's death. Once she did, we finally see daylight (there is daylight in one other scene that is in the present, and it shines from outside into the dark house, which Vitalina chooses to shy away from and stay inside.
The end is very much a flashback, as she described those actions very clearly as her shared work with her husband - it is again an excavation of her memories towards something hopeful and happy, as opposed to her feeling of regret and shame.

I found this to be the most "mainstream", or easiest of the post Ossos films (mainstream isn't a good fit here, but I meant it is the most engaging), even though I do love almost every Costa I've seen (only Colossal Youth was a Colossal disappointment), and I was hit hard how emotional Costa could make me in such a slow-cinema Straub/Bresson like arthouse film - no easy feat. Even though I still prefer his Carax/Murnau like debut, Blood.
Said that, Costa is in my opinion the most difficult director of the arthouse world - I really can't think off the top of my head of someone as difficult. He makes Tsai, Tarr and Martel look like Hollywood by comparison!

[therewillbeblus]

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I have no reason to believe she died, as there is no reason for it to happen - she's very much alive (both in real life, and she is never showed dying), and the graves are holes she dug in the scene before. I thought it was her way of helping and paying back Venture, and helping the other dead as a way of freeing herself from her husband's death. Once she did, we finally see daylight (there is daylight in one other scene that is in the present, and it shines from outside into the dark house, which Vitalina chooses to shy away from and stay inside.
The end is very much a flashback, as she described those actions very clearly as her shared work with her husband - it is again an excavation of her memories towards something hopeful and happy, as opposed to her feeling of regret and shame.

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Fair enough, I saw no reason for it to have happened either, except for what felt like a manipulative narrative tool: cutting a dramatic scene to an undetermined amount of time later (it was finally daylight) when someone approaches Venture (I believe?) to say "she died" explaining a candle fell on her bed. Since she was the only prominent female character, this indicated to me that Varela had died. After a funeral/burial, she walks up from a blind spot in the distance to stand next to him, looking at the grave. I perceived it as an audience trick, maybe I read that whole scene wrong or missed something that would have given it more context.

Either way, I agree with your assessment of why the ending worked, though I took the final shot to be a replication of her descriptions of those scenes, with Varela continuing on to do that work now with Venture. When she takes that breather break to pause, I saw it to be partly out of exhaustion of being older, and also to demonstrate further resilience and a capacity to pause and sit with her emotions, whilst continuing to engage with the world.

[Calvin]

Delayed until August 24th

[Bikey]

Full details of or VITALINA VARELA release now up at our website

[What A Disgrace]

Amazon doesn't seem to have gotten their stock in quite yet.

[mhofmann]

I just got my copy today and noted on the package that it's 1080i at 25fps, which I find quite curious.
Since this is a director-approved transfer, what is the underlying reason this is presented as an interlaced 25fps transfer; was the film shot that way? IMDB just tells me it was shot using an ARRI Alexa, but not a lot more.

[MichaelB]

Pedro Costa often shoots at 25fps - in fact, that's why Eureka's DVD of Colossal Youth is PAL rather than their usual NTSC.

But there won't be any interlacing visible - 50i essentially equates to 25p as far as the actual viewing experience is concerned. (The DVD spec doesn't allow for 25p, so it's a standard workaround.)

[tenia]

I'm also assuming Costa here again shot at 25fps.

[Bikey]

Firstly to answer the Amazon question - it seems there has been an issue with Amazon booking in their stock but we're assured this is being remedied ASAP - but no result yet.
However, it is available form marketplace sellers or from our own website, or other usual suppliers (HMV, Zavvi etc.)

And on the issue of 25fps - Pedro Costa did indeed shoot the film at 25fps, so we of course wanted to respect that decision and retain the original fps to present the film as intended.

[mhofmann]

And on the issue of 25fps - Pedro Costa did indeed shoot the film at 25fps, so we of course wanted to respect that decision and retain the original fps to present the film as intended.

Sounds good, and of course that's the right thing to do. Just hadn't encountered a lot of feature films shot at 25fps recently.

[Bikey]

"It looks magnificent... Contrast is sublime. What a beautifully visual film experience via this impressive HD presentation.
Another masterpiece from Pedro Costa. It is 'pure cinema'... This is a hypnotic visual experience that is so penetrating it's hard to put into words. The Second Run Blu-ray provides an excellent a/v presentation with very appreciated supplements. I'm so thrilled that they have gone to such lengths to respect Horse Money and Vitalina Varela with exceptional packages. We are very fortunate and I would like to congratulate them, again, on another essential release - that should be prominently mentioned in our year-end poll. Our absolute highest recommendation. Do NOT miss this experience!"

DVD Beaver on VITALINA VARELA

[tenia]

Can't say I loved the movie, but the BD's presentation of the movie is absolutely gorgeous.

[Bikey]

Blu-ray now back in stock at Amazon UK

[Bikey]

"[Pedro Costa's] work ascends to new heights in VITALINA VARELA, hauntingly juxtaposing light and shadow in a seemingly unending series of striking tableaux...
Second Run’s impeccable transfer highlighting the hyper-reality of Costa’s images. The deep, rich black levels seen on this disc are essential to appreciating the film’s visual style, and a continued point in favor of discs over streaming.
Every other aspect of the transfer is just as impressive"
World Cinema Paradise

[hearthesilence]

"[Pedro Costa's] work ascends to new heights in VITALINA VARELA, hauntingly juxtaposing light and shadow in a seemingly unending series of striking tableaux...
Second Run’s impeccable transfer highlighting the hyper-reality of Costa’s images. The deep, rich black levels seen on this disc are essential to appreciating the film’s visual style, and a continued point in favor of discs over streaming.
Every other aspect of the transfer is just as impressive"
World Cinema Paradise

I'm glad I caught this before the theater closures in NYC because it was extraordinary to watch on the big screen (Lincoln Center's in this case). Granted the competition was decimated due to the ongoing pandemic, but it's by far the best film I've seen this year and maybe the best he's made so far, though it does indeed build on what he's made in the past thematically and aesthetically (i.e. not just because the title character/performer first appeared in Horse Money). Even if the pandemic didn't happen, I'm not sure I would have seen a better film this year.

[Bikey]

Amazon UK price drop - Blu-ray now just £12:49

[hmcnaught]

Are there any plans to release more of Costa's works to blu-ray?

[Calvin]

Are there any plans to release more of Costa's works to blu-ray?

Second Run haven't said one way or the other yet regarding a UK release but Grasshopper will be releasing O Sangue on Blu-Ray in the US this year

[What A Disgrace]

After that, the only thing left would be his initial trilogy of Fontainhas. And two of those were shot in SD. Perhaps Costa could pull a Sean Baker and do an upscale one day.

[ryannichols7]

there is already a US BD of Casa de Lava of course but I could see SR going down the path of upgrading both that film and O Sangue in one set, which would be pretty cool. Adrian Martin is a big fan of the latter film and I'd love to see SR bring him in for that

MOC only ever released Colossal Youth in the UK, yes? I can't see those three being a priority for BD, but if they never got any release at all..