It is difficult, if not impossible, to think of a woman in film, who has such a magical, such an overpowering aura around her as does Pedro Costa's Vitalina Varela. The minute she appears, stepping out of an airplane, arriving from Cap Verde with the help of a ticket which she had waited for forty years, Costa's film changes. Or perhaps, I have changed after the first thirteen minutes, after seeing men, silent in their grief, returning to their makeshift homes, alone, away from people's sight, back into the darkness of their lives, back to their . . .

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