Haut und Knochen

Imagine going on a date with a really boring individual only to be told, once the date was finished, that you've been set up with that person's even duller sib. That begins to describe how I felt as I watched this deadening precursor to the terminally enervating "In Vanda's Room".

Pedro Costa is a veritable master of ennui. Clearly, during the course of his sluggish career, he has thoroughly imbibed the spirit of Akerman, Rohmer and Figgis. Consider the first half hour wherein we are treated to scenes of characters vacuming an apartment, walking at interminable length down a Lisbon slum street, taking a drink of water from a kitchen faucet, staring off into space (lots of that) smoking (this is, after all, a European film), doing a whole lot of not talking to each other, and falling asleep. Wishing to avoid this last, I pulled the plug. C minus.