Casa de Lava

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Casa de Lava (Down to Earth)
Directed by	Pedro Costa
Produced by	Paulo Branco
Written by	Pedro Costa
Starring	Inês de Medeiros Isaach De Bankolé Édith Scob Raul Andrade
Music by	Raul Andrade, Paul Hindemit
Cinematography	Emmanuel Machuel
Editing by	Dominique Auvray
Release date(s)	1995
Running time	110 min.
Country	Portugal
Language	Portuguese Cape Verdean Creole
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Casa de Lava (English title: Down to Earth) is a 1995 Portuguese drama film directed by Pedro Costa. The film is set in Cape Verde Islands, a former Portuguese colony.

The drama is characterized by its reduced narrative, and photographies of the volcano in the Cape Verde islands. The title literally means "a house of lava".

Casa de Lava was selected for "Un Certain Regard" section at 1994 Cannes International Film Festival. ^[1]

[edit] Plot

The film tells a story of Mariana, a depressing nurse working in Lisbon. She accompanies an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip to home. After she arrives in Cape Verde, she encounters the strange and enigmatic world. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama. There she finds that "she brought a living man among the dead." ^[2]

The director Pedro Costa made the film in a minimalist style. Some ominous, poetic imageries of local people and Mount Fogo, the highest active volcano of Cape Verde, are used as esoteric metaphors of the heroine's isolation. For instance, the eerily first images are of Mount Fogo's volcanic eruption and the lava flowing on its surface, preluding this film about solitary life with juxtaposition of silent volcanic eruption and locals' close-up shots accompanied by ominous music.