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• "In Vanda's Room"

  • Jules Savant
  • 4/1/13

  Although the film "In Vanda's Room" attempts to paint a depressing picture of addicts in a slum neighborhood, the documentary is not without its light moments. There is the honesty of Vanda telling her African friend that Heroin "is what we choose to do." There are people offering to sell everything from wild birds to spoons, to people with no money. And there is the best line when Vanda and her friend are smoking Heroin "You've never heard that saying? 'Been there, done that - I've got the basket?' I saw it in the movie Police Academy two weeks ago." Amid the squalor of the addicts' life are glimpses of nature, children and regular life. There is one addict who bemoans living in "ghost houses" where "a witch wouldn't even live." The film makes no judgment of the addicts or the neighborhood, rather, it is a slice of life in an urban Portugese neighborhood. "In Vanda's Room" surprised me: it was real, and sad and comical.

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