It’s certainly not for all tastes – nor would it likely agree with everyone on our staff – but Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa’s slow-burning, stark and almost mystical “Colossal Youth” strikes this writer as one of the towering achievements in DV film this decade (up there with David Lynch’s impressionistic head-fuck “Inland Empire” and, yes, the divisive, grainy Michael Mann epic, “Miami Vice”). As such, it’s a shame that no one has bothered to release Costa’s magnum opus in any form since its very limited NYC theatrical run in 2007. Until now, the film has remained so obscure as to be unknown to even the majority of arthouse audiences, so the news of its arrival on DVD will hopefully help to change that.
There’s currently a retrospective of Costa’s work being shown at the Tate Modern, ending on October 4th, and, according to The Auteurs, the latest issue of Sight & Sound describing the retrospective also announces that the Criterion Collection will be releasing the filmmaker’s Fontainhas Trilogy – “Ossos,” “In Vanda’s Room” and of course “Colossal Youth” – along with Costa’s short films, “Tarrafal” and “The Rabbit Hunters.” All are essential in terms of tracking the progression of a director whose career the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw describes as “one of the most fascinating in modern cinema.”
This isn’t the first time a “Colossal Youth” DVD release has been announced, as the film mag Cinema Scope had originally planned to include a copy of the film, courtesy of Filmswelike, with their Summer 2008 issue. But then came news that this promotion would be pushed to the publication’s fall issue, and finally that “Colossal Youth” would be replaced with Jia Zhang-ke’s “The World”… which isn’t exactly the same thing.
Also, Jia’s film is available on DVD elsewhere, and the transfer Cinema Scope offered of it wasn’t even wide screen, thus making many who subscribed just so they could finally get their hands on “Colossal Youth” (ahem), very annoyed. Thankfully, that’s unlikely to happen with the always reliable Criterion, and the only question that remains is whether the set will be a part of their ongoing Eclipse series or not.
In other Costa news, the director’s latest film, “Ne Change Rien,” a documentary on French singer and actress Jeanne Balibar (who dazzled in Jacques Rivette’s “The Duchess of Langeais” a couple years back), premiered at Cannes this year (we missed it because the screenings were at incredibly inconvenient times and held outside the Croisette) to modestly positive reviews, and will be showing at the New York Film Festival on October 8th @ 6:00 PM. At least one of us hopes to catch it there. — Sam C. Mac
Here’s a Japanese version of the trailer.