COLO

Portugal, 2017, 136 minutes, Colour.
Alice Albergaria Borges, Joao Pedro Vaz. Beatriz Batarda, Clara Jost.
Directed by Teresa Villaverde.

Colo was screened in competition at the Berlinale of 2017.

This is a long film and, except for devotees of very serious cinema, it does not hold the interest throughout. It is a very talkative film but most of the principal characters remain enigmatic.

It is a Portuguese film about family as well is about outsiders. The setting is Lisbon, streets and departments, interiors, school. The emphasis in dialogue and conversations.

The central character is the father, around 50, retrenched from his work, full of anxiety, making phone calls to get other jobs, upset when his wife doesn’t return when he expected, taking a friend from the past to the beach, threatening him about the job – the man punching the father and running away and driving off. The father is left of the beach, later stripping and going into the water, coming out wet. He says he is agreeable that his wife having another job to make ends meet, but they are gradually using up all their funds.

The wife seems quite a sensible woman, practical, but her husband’s behaviour, caring for her daughter getting her down, she loses her extra job and decided it would be better if she went away for a while, living in a hotel, her husband and daughter going to live with her mother – which they do, the mother welcoming them.

The other main character is the daughter, at school, interested in design, with a boyfriend and sexual relationships, studying, puzzled about her father, supportive of her mother. She is also supportive of another girl at school who, it seems obvious, is pregnant. The pregnant girl has nowhere to go, has not told her parents, and the daughter of the family invites her to live in – the father taking compassion on her and even saying that it will take responsibility for the child.

So, with an array of characters in contemporary problems, the film is both emotional and cerebral, especially with this dialogue – and the audience is left with: so what…?