No quarto da Vanda

In Vanda’s Room has a clear link to Pedro Costa’s previous film Ossos (in 1998 in Rotterdam). Not only is the film shot in the same place – Fontainhas, an immigrant district of Lisbon – but Vanda Duarte, who performs in Ossos, also returns in this film. Vanda is even the essential middle-point of the film: the director follows her for a year with a digital camera. However the word ‘follow’ may be a little exaggerated: Vanda’s freedom of movement is limited to her room of 3 metres square, in which she receives friends and relatives, eats, deals and shoots up.The lack of a film crew means that a strange kind of intimacy is evoked in In Vanda’s Room, and it is not clear whether – or how much – Vanda is aware of the camera. Costa had at first wanted the whole film set in her room, but Vanda’s visitors persuaded him to point his camera at the rest of the district too. So In Vanda’s Room has become more than the story of a drug addict: it is a study of an alternative way of life.Where professional actors performed side-by-side with amateurs in Costa’s earlier films, in In Vanda’s Room, Costa limited himself to amateurs. The initiative for the film came from the leading lady herself. Costa, who describes the traditional way of casting as fascistic, remains true to his convictions that, as a director, he should not force himself on his subjects.