Perfect cast and a good story

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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.

I found myself wondering, 'what is real in this film, and what did the director add, if anything?' It is a portrait of everyone, not just 'lowly' drug users. And no, the reviewer who claimed a 'well trained dog' could film a movie such as this is probably a 12 year old, especially since many scenes do not take place in a)a structure being demolished, b) many characters depicted are not using drugs, and etc etc... just a terrible review from someone whose favorite movie is probably 'Thor'. I also loved the soundscapes - all of the noise of commerce, music, and yes, demolition. I think it is interesting to witness the visual transformation that occurs within this trilogy of films. Very poetic and empathetic; loving, almost.

I am Portuguese. This is, by far, the worst Portuguese movie I've ever seen. I very much doubt that anyone, not related with the people involved in this production, can stand its full length or have a positive opinion about it. After some 15 minutes, the film runs out of ideas and it becomes very *very* **very** hard to endure the remaining 15 minutes, let alone 155 minutes...A well trained dog could replicate this crap. The recipe is: 1) don't move the camera; 2) sniff for a house in process of demolition; 3) tap record on the camera and let it register falling bricks; 4) find some junkies or junkies lookalike and ask them to speak about nothing, using plenty of C M F swearing language (C = c0ck, M = sh1t, F = f2ck). Bravo!Worth zero. It is really that bad.

«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.