Ossos

Portugal, France, Denmark

1997

98 Min

Color

1.66:1

Portuguese

Currently 3.9/5 Stars.
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CAST Vanda Duarte, Nuno Vaz, Mariya Lipkina, Isabel Ruth, Inês Medeiros, Miguel Sermão, Berta Susana Teixeira

SOUND Henri Maïkoff, Gérard Rousseau

Venice (In Competition): Best Cinematography, Rotterdam, San Francisco

Synopsis

The first film in Pedro Costa’s transformative trilogy about Fontainhas, an impoverished quarter of Lisbon, Ossos is a tale of young lives torn apart by desperation. After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live. With its reserved, shadowy cinematography by Emmanuel Machuel (who collaborated with Bresson on L’argent), Ossos is a haunting look at a devastated community. —The Criterion Collection

Director

Pedro Costa

Pedro Costa (born 1959) is a Portuguese film director. He is acclaimed for using his ascetic style to depict the marginalised people in desperate living situations. Many of his films are set in a district of Lisbon inhabited by the socially disadvantaged and shot in a natural and low-key way that makes them resemble documentaries. While studying history at University of Lisbon, Costa switched to film courses at School of Theatre and Cinema (Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema). After working as an assistant director to several directors such as Jorge Silva Melo and João Botelho, he made a first feature film O Sangue (The Blood) in 1989. He collected the France Culture Award (Foreign Cineaste of the Year) at 2002 Cannes International Film Festival for directing the film No Quarto da Vanda (In Vanda’s Room). Juventude em Marcha (Youth on the March, known as “Colossal Youth” in Anglophone countries, and “En avant, jeunesse” – “Onward, Youth” – in Francophone countries) was selected for… read more

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Judicial Joe

23Sep11

I'm finally starting to "get" contemplative cinema. The story here was well told, it had a Bressonian grace in the acting, and the urban cinematography and layered sound mix were excellent. Grade: B+.