Blood (O Sangue) [DVD]

Alan Fair

at 3:45 am

Review by Alan Fair for Blood (O Sangue) [DVD]
Rating: (5 / 5)
Costa’s debut has the capacity to hypnotise and inspire wonder like a slow flowing river or the movement of starlings. The film is shot in black and white and that is what it is, an examination of the encounter between these two, it is not monochrome. Black and white are not opposites but are married by distinction, it is a relationship of difference not opposition and this encounter is given figurative power by the encounters of characters and of spaces.

The film is a journey, not guided by telos but by the endless movement of emotions, the chances of life and the experiments of youth. The two young lovers dance thier way towards a relationship, an awkward dance, they stumble over eachothers expectations as they move toward some semblence of what the world might expect like the surrogate family of ‘Rebel Without a Cause’. It is though, in another film by Nick Ray that we might begin to discern the intertextual nuances of adolescents dreaming of adulthood, ‘They Live By Night’. Both films deliver a bruised vision of dreamed families stumbling towards dissolution.

This is the first film I have seen by Costa, just watched it 10 minutes ago. It is the kind of film that you experience as a form of osmosis, it rises inside you, an oneiric study in mood and emotional infusion, narcotic cinema, beautiful.