Ossos:Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa

"Letters from Fontainhas : Three Films by Pedro Costa" is another impressive release from Criterion. While I don't believe that I saw the brilliance on my initial viewing of the films that many critics and fans of Costa find in his works, I must admit that these challenging and oftentimes rewarding films (in particular "Ossos" and "Colossal Youth") represent the impressive work of a highly talented filmmaker. I say that the films are challenging because, with the exception of "Ossos" (and even here there are traces of the style found in Costa's subsequent works), the films are largely plotless, float about without narrative cohesion, and feature long stretches without any dialogue. That being said, they have attracted a number of very passionate admirers, and while I cannot count myself as one, I would say that all three are good films that are worth the viewing investment.

All three films in this set exhibit a different image quality. "Ossos", the oldest film here, is also the only one shot on film. The image is very strong and sharp. As the booklet tells us, the film has undergone a full restoration supervised by Costa and has had all instances of damage removed (at least I didn't catch any). What's more, this release corrects for the original Gemini release by presenting the film uncropped and in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen. I've included a couple of captures from the original Gemini release, and as you can see the Criterion is superior in every way. Not only does it have significantly improved sharpness and clarity, but the colors are also more natural, the artifacts gone, and there's a significant amount of information on all four sides that was missing in the Gemini release. The story is not so good for the other two features. "In Vanda's Room", which was converted from PAL to NTSC for this release, suffers from interlacing with visible combing and is full of artifacts like jaggies and noise. Like its successor, "In Vanda's Room" was shot on SD digital video, using only natural lighting and the image looks about like what you'd expect. The well illuminated shots are clear enough, but the images in some of the darker shots can on occasion be indiscernible. Although it too was shot in digital video, the transfer is progressive and suffers from fewer artifacts. It may be slightly cleaner, but there's definitely some noise to be found here as well. As the booklet states, Costa supervised a color correction on the last two films in the set as well.

All three films are presented with their original Portuguese soundtracks and sound quite nice in their DD mono. Audio defect in "Ossos" were fixed, but so far as I can tell, the digital soundtracks for the other two films remain unchanged. None of the audio suffers from any obvious defects, but you'll get what you expect out of a 2.0 master. All three films have newly commissioned optional English subtitles, that are on caliber with what you'd expect from a production house like Criterion.