NOITES/NIGHTS

Portugal, 2000, 75 minutes, Colour.
Claudia Tomaz, Joao Pereira.
Directed by Claudia Tomaz.

Nights is a short first film by a media studies graduate of Lisbon University. Having made shorts and medium-length films on video, this is her first feature-length film. She stars as a seriously ill drug addict, depending on her friend Joao, who loves her but acts as a prostitute to raise money for their drug habits. The film is really a contemplation of these two characters in their context in Lisbon, on the margins. The girl is seen as taking the drugs, heroin dependent, physically ill, having a meal with her mother, taking her mother's money and food but unable to relate well to her, or even to go to the doctor. She is also sick. She and her friend also go to the country to seek a peaceful refuge but finally finish back on the side of the hill in the city.

The young man is stronger, loves the girl, goes with an elderly male as a prostitute, with a young male, with a middle-aged woman. He says he is disgusted by their life, by what he has to do to raise money for their habit. With a friend they go on the train ride to the countryside to seek a safe house, but they cannot find it. This is a symbol for what happens to them in their life. They seem unable to move out of their world. The style of the film is often close-up, focus on the faces of the two characters so that the audience has time to contemplate them. There are also panoramas of the city, so that these two characters are seen within the context of contemporary Portugal.

As an exercise in film-making, it is a powerful look at drug addicts - but who would actually want to go to see this kind of film as it has been done so often before?