The Criterion Collection

Criterion’s release last week of the four-DVD box set Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa—featuring Ossos, In Vanda’s Room, and Colossal Youth, acclaimed Portuguese dramas about marginalized lives in a Lisbon slum—has been met with a critical enthusiasm bordering on ecstasy. “His movies are very hard to see here . . . The release of this boxed set by Criterion is a major (if not historic) event,” exclaims the New Yorker’s Richard Brody on his blog. Brody also writes, in a review of the set for the magazine, “These works join an unsparing yet tender look at residents of this ghetto with a boldly aestheticized, nearly Faulknerian arc of history.” The Los Angeles Times’ Sam Adams calls Letters from Fontainhas “one of the most anticipated DVD releases of the year, or the last several.” According to Dave Kehr, in the New York Times, “This is challenging work that demands and rewards repeated viewings—the art-house classics of tomorrow, today.”

Paste’s Sean Gandert goes beyond the features in the set and takes a close look at the short films included as supplements: Little Boy Male, Little Girl Female; The Rabbit Hunters; and Tarrafal. Gandert writes, “They’re not supplements that should be ignored, given how much light they shed on Costa’s complicated beliefs as a filmmaker. In its own way, this second trilogy from Fontainhas is just as fascinating and groundbreaking as the first.”