No Quarto da Vanda (2000) Reviews

• Ghost people

  valadas2003-11-29

  This movie follows somehow in the wake of the Eye Cinema or Cinema of Truth (Dziga Vertov, Jean Rouch etc.) though with a much different and unusual subject: the everyday life of a group of drug addicts living in a degraded quarter of the outskirts of Lisbon. It's performed almost entirely by non-actors I mean by the drug addicts themselves who live before the camera as if it was not there, in a remarkable and genuine display of realism which impresses deeply our minds and feelings. These people whom we see verging slowly towards their own moral and physical ruin move before our eyes like ghosts still endowed with conscience and sentiments, capable of reasoning about their own disgrace in a very lucid way which makes us feel that we are in front of human beings after all, worth of our comprehension and compassion not to mention the fact of our own responsibility for that situation in this strange society we live in. This is the best movie about drug addicts I've ever seen and it should be seen mainly by those who persist in ignoring this problem or who think that it can be solved by fighting production and distribution of drugs instead of trying to fight consumption I mean deviating people chiefly youngsters from the inclination to consume drugs which will allow them to evade hardship and dullness of life. Although if it will be necessary to reform society for that purpose. The camera has apparently no leading role in this movie almost limiting itself to show us those people living (?) before our eyes. Their gestures, words, looks and above all their silences have so much weight on our hearts and minds that they are almost unbearable. After seeing this movie we can but feel that we all must do something and quickly.

• An Absolute Masterpiece! One of the most powerful films ever!

  john_parker2003-01-29

  Pedro Costa´s «No Quarto da Vanda» is a dramatic picture of our present reality with real people that live day after day trying to find a way to explain their actual state, as drug addicts. It is also a film about generations full of addictions and social problems that don´t have any solution yet... Powerful, contagious and extremely real this is «No Quarto da Vanda» , an absolute masterpiece! 10/10

• People on Drugs? Well, there's a bit more to it than that!

  paulgeaf2011-01-25

  I would love to say, like I read on this very site yesterday, before watching the film, that this is 'the best drug abuse film' but it really is not. I don't want to come across as if I am saying this is lighthearted or lessen the impact of it in any way. It Is a harrowing study of some pretty messed up people. A woman who is immersed in drug-taking and nothing else in life. The people around her, everyone with the same story or problem, they ALL take drugs. It's sad to see. Somewhere, behind those eyes you can see a pretty woman who must have had dreams once, her sister too...they are beautiful women gone sick and twisted. I do agree that this film should be shown everywhere though, this is what drugs do to you! Or perhaps that should say, this is -what society that doesn't care does to you?! Watch this. You will never see another film like it and for better or worse, you need to know it exists.

• Exploitation

  fullfemale2013-04-13

  Other viewers are apparently moved by what they see on the screen- a tale of social and moral decay, and a call to our sympathies and outrage. The film doesn't appeal to me in that way, because I can't help but be aware of the filmmaker, whose presence looms over everything and who is the real character of the film. What's he's done is gone into a poetically haunting and inherently tragic environment and attempted to "capture" it. In this sense the film is closer to photography than to a film, although it retains a sort of loose narrative. The fact that we do look down on these people and make moral judgments about them is what make the film exploitative. Costa takes the most disenfranchised, powerless people with no will to live and makes a career and critical fame from it, while the drug addicts in the film stay where they are, which is hopeless and dying, and then we get to hear from him when he screens the film that many did die. In this sense it's almost a SNUFF film. Of course we are going to feel something about that, especially when it is all beautifully lit and framed to look like a painting. Costa claims to admire John Ford. Well, John Ford was making myths, and so is Costa. I just question the sort of myth-making he is engaging in, and the moral implications of it. He gets to sit around and live with these people who are dying, capture them aesthetically with his camera, get them to work and learn lines and repeat their own dialogues for camera takes without pay, and then takes these voyeuristic images and shows them to a privileged middle-class Western audience to admire at film festivals,so they can "feel a little something." If he had used actors I would feel differently, but then the film would have a totally different quality. Actors are paid to be used like props and furniture, and actors are not usually captured in the state of dying.

• A Masterpiece! One of the best films of 2000.

  john_parker2003-01-26

  «No Quarto da Vanda» is one of the most powerful films that i have ever seen.It´s a perfect picture of our actual reality. Drugs are the cause of poverty in a great amount of civilized and non-civilized countries. Pedro Costa´s «No Quarto da Vanda» is certainly an alert for those people that still live in a magic world full of happiness and joy... Impressive and cruelly real! Luis Mendonça, John-Parker. 10/10.