Costa Close-Ups

Tuesday, October 16, 2007  | 

"When one is in prison, the most important thing is the door" -- Robert Bresson

At almost the exact midpoint of his second feature, Casa de Lava, Pedro Costa cuts together three close-ups of locked doors. It's unlike any other sequence in the film, and there's no real narrative motivation for it. As he will do throughout his next film, Ossos, Costa floods the soundtrack with the sound of a crying child, creating (a la Bresson) an elliptical tension between sound and image.

Consider this a half-assed contribution to the Close-Up Blog-a-Thon.