AFI FEST Los Angeles International Film Festival 2009

Though the title of Pedro Costa’s latest translates as “nothing ever changes,” those who know him only from his masterpiece COLOSSAL YOUTH will find everything’s different. Costa filmed actor-chanteuse Jeanne Balibar performing in club settings, and, using additional materials, created a transfixing black-and-white contemplation of an artist as she rehearses and finds her way into song after song with her accompanying musicians. As with WHERE HAS YOUR HIDDEN SMILE GONE?, Costa’s sublime portrait of Jean-Marie Straub and his late filmmaker partner and wife Danièle Huillet, the film is less about a final result than the pathway there, one in this case fraught with flubs and repetitions. “We tried to find something that’s under the surface of this film,” Costa remarked in a recent interview on The Auteurs Web site, “not even a story…something about fear, the light and blackness.” And the process of creating art out of thin air, the drama and the magic that comes with it.

–Robert Koehler