Behold Vanda's face. Presumably, she's still in her early 20s but her skin already has the swarthy lifelessness of a junkie's, and her limbs are pathetically thin. Her long, dark hair is still beautiful but a visiting friend points out to her how oily it looks, urging her to wash it once in a while. Behold Vanda's tiny room, which holds little more than her single bed and a trash can. It's never quiet here: Her mother is constantly yelling from the other side of the wafer-thin wall, and street sounds pour in from the window. On top of that, all the buildings in Vanda's district are being demolished, which produces a perpetually grating cacophony.
Not that this bothers Vanda much. For much of the film "No Quarto da Vanda (In Vanda's Room)" she is seen reclining on her bed, sniffing heroin from a sheet of tinfoil. A three-hour documentary about Lisbon drug addicts, "No Quarto" is an astonishing work that defies all expectations. This is first and foremost a beautiful piece of filmmaking, despite most of the scenes being of people sniffing or shooting up, and most of the dialogue consisting of their half-baked ramblings and complaints.
"No Quarto" has the texture of a 17th-century oil painting (think Vermeer with a digital camera) and much of the ambience comes from director Pedro Costa's use of natural lighting and the way he frames his scenes. Costa says he was inspired by Yasujiro Ozu, and indeed the camera is always low and unmoving, focused with utter calm on Vanda's figure as she indulges her habit, alone or with friends. Her face and hands are softly luminous, emerging from the depths of the murky darkness that defines her room (and the rest of her house).
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