JUVENTUDE EM MARCHE
Portugal, 2006, 154 minutes, Colour.
Ventura Vanda Duarte, Beatriz Duarte, Gustavo Sumpta.
Directed by Pedro Costa.
This is a work of cinema art. However, art does not have the same impact on all audiences. For those whose sensibility leads them to stay in the sensing present, appreciating what is up there on the screen, this film could be a rewarding contemplation of characters speaking their minds and their lives. For those of a more intuitive sensibility, whose attention is less immediately focused, this could be an ordeal, requiring a fixed patience that may not seem justified.
Acknowledgement must be given to the director’s skill in working for 15months with minimal artifice, digital camera and a series of very long takes with fixed camera. An old man whose wife leaves him wanders his neighbourhood talking but mainly listening to the problems of a group of people he sees as his children.
This could work well as theatre where the live actor is the centre of attention rather than cinema where one is too conscious of performance. It is also the stuff of radio drama where the imagination creates the person as one listens. At worst this is like being in public transport, forced to listen to loud one-sided mobile phone conversations that intrude and one can’t escape from.
1. Response to the style of the film? The long takes? The performance in front of the camera? Dialogue? A work of art for some? Endurance for others?
2. The work of the director, his painstaking efforts, the camera shots, the long takes, the fixed camera? The lack of artificial colour, make-up? The naturalism?
3. The title – the focus on old people, the next generation? Youth or not?
4. The cumulative effect of Ventura and his visits to the various people? His interactions with them?
5. The prologue, his wife and her monologue, her experiences, her marriage, Ventura, leaving? The effect on Ventura himself, his returning to it?
6. Ventura as a person, age, experience? His marriage? His relationship with his wife? The shock of her leaving? His seeing the people in the quarter as his children? The visits from one to the other? The discussions? His own attitudes, his compassion for the people? Eating with them, listening to them? The cumulative effect?
7. The people that Ventura met – especially Vanda, her relationship to her child, drug addiction? Her husband? As a character, her emotionality? Her husband, the garage, his coming up for meals?
8. Beatriz, the different house, her different problems? Ventura and his being welcomed?
9. The other characters in the quarter, relationship to Ventura, outpourings to him?
10. The atmosphere of the quarter, a slum in Lisbon, dark, grim? The world of these people – and a world needing compassion? Problems, relationships, drugs? Isolation, loneliness and alienation?
