➤ PEDRO COSTA, from p.26
mired Costa’s aesthetics but found
his work morally questionable. (A
semi-documentary, “In Vanda’s
Room” shows non-professional actor
Vanda Duarte using real heroin
for its entire length.) Over the past
decade, the issue of who gets to
speak about minorities has risen
to the forefront in discourse about
art. Costa is a white man whose
reputation rests on fi lms about
poor people, most of them Black.
The danger of critiquing artists
on this sort of ground, however, is
that it can actually reinforce the
othering of people of color and/
or the poor, mystifying their lives.
Costa’s fi lms offer a very subjective
perspective on life in Fontainhas
— as critic Neil Bahadur wrote,
they suggest “the failure of a political
situation can only be effectively
and authentically expressed
through the depiction of its poorest
Kris Hitchen in Ken Loach’s “Sorry We Missed You.”
➤ KEN LOACH, from p.26
than British stars. Ross Brewster,
who plays Ricky’s boss, still works
as a policeman.
From everything I’ve read about
gig work, the general outline of
“Sorry We Missed You” is accurate.
It sketches in the vulnerabilities
of a society where workers are no
longer in a position to own their
homes and cars. I sympathize with
the fi lm’s politics and think its
heart is in the right place, but Laverty’s
script rolls out the kind of
noble victims, teenage smartphone
addicts sinking into delinquency,
and evil bosses we’ve seen too
conditions of living” — when it
would be easier and safer to look
away.
If there is a “Portuguese Dream”
akin to the mythology of the American
Dream, “Vitalina Varela”
quickly dispenses with it. Varela is
told to turn back home at the airport.
Instead, she gets off the plane
and heads into a nocturnal world
of crumbling buildings and constant
murmur. Portugal isn’t the
promised land of money and middle
class job opportunities for immigrants.
Varela becomes trapped
in a slum. White Portuguese people
don’t exist in this fi lm. But architecture
is an extension of personality,
even physicality. Varela
relates a story about the amount
of work— which damaged her body
permanently — she put into building
a house for her husband.
The press kit for “Vitalina Varela”
dodges the usual clichés of its
form. Instead, it serves up a twosentence
ZEITGEIST/ KINO LORBER
many times. As soon as Seb shows
his sister photos of himself and
his friends’ graffi ti on his phone,
we can tell exactly what’s going to
happen to him.
“Sorry We Missed You” fears the
spectator couldn’t identify with a
hero struggling with any self-destructive
tendencies or perversities.
Rather than showing the systemic
complexity of a job whose workers
are unwittingly serving the surveillance
machine, it relies on a
boss bragging about being “Nasty
Bastard Number One.” The fi lm
would have more emotional force if
it didn’t feel like an overextended
version of British “kitchen sink
description of the story
and a page-long summary of “Vitalina’s
Facts.” They describe the
life of the real Varela, overlapping
with what we’re shown in the fi lm
but going into far more detail about
her background and life upon arrival
in Lisbon.
Costa typically works with very
small crews; in a Q&A at Lincoln
Center a few years ago, he said that
he agonizes over moving the camera
a tiny amount back and forth
before fi nally choosing a set-up to
use. The effort pays off. But the
originality of Costa’s work stems
from its combination of a strong
grounding in reality (including
an ongoing collaboration with actors
like Varela, who appeared in
his 2014 fi lm “Horse Money,” and
Ventura) and its extremely stylized
nature.
Leonardo Simões’ cinematography
is so dark that it will be impossible
to watch “Vitalina Varela”
realism.” The Dardenne brothers’
“Two Days, One Night” actually
achieved what “Sorry We Missed
You” is trying to accomplish, but it
refl ected its view of late capitalism
as an obstacle course fi xed against
the working class in its anxious
style, not just its story.
The characters in “Sorry We
Missed You” feel conceived only
on home video. The fi lm places a
small pool of light in the center of
its frame, surrounded by infi nite
gradations of black. Costa and
Simões maintain extremely precise
control over their lighting. Almost
the entire fi lm takes place at night,
which contributes to its oneiric
qualities. It also uses sound design
to hint at a world undergoing destruction
and rebuilding just out of
our sight. When we fi nally see this
process — in sunlight! — it takes
on a great emotional charge. The
priest even comes up with a metaphysical
explanation for the fi lm’s
look. Watching “Vitalina Varela,” I
saw God — and I’m an atheist.
VITALINA VARELA | Directed by
Pedro Costa | In Portuguese with
English subtitles | Grasshopper
Film | Opens Feb. 21 at Film at Lincoln
Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe
Film Center, 144-165 W. 65th St.;
fi lmlinc.org
to call attention to the horror of
labor exploitation. This is the cinema
of good intentions and meager
achievements.
SORRY WE MISSED YOU | Directed
by Ken Loach | Zeitgeist/
Kino Lorber | Opens Mar. 4 | Film
Forum, 209 W. Houston St.; fi lmforum.
org
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