Appendix: Colossal Youth Scene Breakdown

Summary

Colossal Youth: Scene Breakdown

• 1. An unpeopled courtyard in Fontainhas, Lisbon, by night. Furniture is being thrown from a first floor window. (furniture [1]; falling [1]) A ‘portrait’ of Clothilde, wielding a knife. (knives [1]) Clothilde describes swimming, untroubled by sharks and how she watches, from the sea, her son crying on the beach, while other people watch her from the shore. She withdraws. (departure [1])

• 2. Ventura arrives at his daughter Bete's door. She tells him he has the wrong door and the wrong daughter but he denies this. ‘Your mother has left me,’ Ventura says, ‘I’ve been having this nightmare for more than thirty years.’ (departure [2]; dream [1])

• 3. Scene: waiting for Gustavo [1]. Ventura picks up his son (Gustavo) from a construction site we only hear but do not see. (work [1]; waiting [1])

• 4. Ventura and Gustavo eat together. ‘Not hungry?’ Gustavo asks. ‘No,’ says Ventura. (appetite [1]) Ventura tells Gustavo that Clotilde has gone. ‘She stabbed me with a knife … She had Clothilde's face, but it wasn't her … I don't know if it was her or another woman I slept with.’ (departure [3]; knives [2]; dream [2]; confusion of identity [1])

• 5. Outside the new apartments [1]. Ventura calls to Vanda, who appears, but only as a voice.

• 6. In Vanda's room [1]. Ventura and Vanda watch TV. Medium close framing, more darkness than light. Vanda wants, among other things – including the unemployment benefit she isn't getting – her daughter to be with her, but she isn’t. (work [2]) Vanda's mother is dead (hence she is not Clothilde, we assume). (doing nothing [1] [importantly distinct from ‘waiting’])

• 7. The shack [1]. Lento and Ventura play cards. Lento asks for a letter to send his wife and Ventura instantly begins reciting one. (the letter [1]) Ventura asks Lento to write it down, but ‘there are no pens in the shack’.

• 8. Outside Bete's house [1]. Ventura waits outside what we will only later discover is Bete's house. He says ‘I brought chicken,’ but is not let in. Eventually he leaves. (waiting [2])