Teresa Villaverde's clearly structured film Colo tells of the deep exhaustion that comes from impoverishment and the loss of perspectives, as well as from life in a (Southern) Europe marked by the financial crisis. At the same time, she uses the luminous colours of Portuguese summer to contrasting effect: no matter how much the sun may be radiating from the blue sky, the minds of the protagonists are defined by a sense of doom. The father is unemployed, the mother is reaching the limits of her powers with two jobs and the teenage daughter Marta lets herself drift aimlessly. The unstoppable social decline of this middle-class nuclear family – soon, they will no longer be able to afford the pretty apartment, whose stylish decor bears witness to a prosperous past – sets into action a process of disintegration and a gradual drying up of language and trust.
The screenwriter, director and producer Villaverde – who was born 1966 in Lisbon and became internationally known in 1998 with Os Mutantes – here presents a destructive reduction, which is aesthetically reinforced by long takes, precise framing and accurately paced camera movements. With concentrated calm, Villaverde creates a cinematic structure of great beauty, revealing a mechanism that eats away at our personalities.
