Ossos (‘bones’) is a minimalist drama set in the Creole slum Estrella d’Africa in Lisbon. Tina has had a baby in hospital, comes home and immediately turns on the gas. Tina’s boyfriend, still a teenager too, saves the child, wraps it in a rubbish bag and goes out into the street to beg. He offers the child for sale. When that doesn’t work, he leaves the baby with a nurse, later with a young prostitute. Tina and her best friend Clotilde meanwhile try to get the child back. The baby will survive.Costa barely lets his actors show any emotions. Their faces are taught, their movements slow and tired. They are people who are beaten senseless in a world where the only really cheerful – or at least warm human – note has to come from the friendship between Tina and Clotilde. But the feeling that Costa manages to evoke in his wayward way is strong and convincing and ensures that the viewer looks despair straight in the eye. That is also thanks to the dark photography of Machuel and the disturbingly persistent editing of Bastide.
