Love heartbreakingly clashes with economic difficulties in Ico Costa’s third feature, shot on location in Mozambique and featuring non-professional actors. The film opens on a gentle moment between Domingos (Domingos Marengula) and Neusia (Neusia Emídio Guiamba), their figures wrapped in the velvety half-light of the early dawn. Lying in bed together, the young couple sleepily talk of mundane trivialities but their tender gaze seems to speak louder than words; locked in each other’s arms, the pair will soon spend the rest of the film apart.
Unsatisfied with the meagre earnings he makes from washing cars, Domingos leaves his home town for the dangerous goldmines in the north of the country. When he enters this precarious trade, the camera trails behind his footsteps as he passes through rocky terrains and makeshift tents. It’s an interesting stylistic choice that seeks to emphasise both the geographical specificity and the lethal risks of Domingos’s environment, as well as his bond with fellow workers. When seen in group compositions, the men share a moving rapport that can’t always resist the callous indifference of an exploitative industry.
Nevertheless, with Domingos largely filmed from behind, much of the intimacy seen in the striking first scene is lost. The camera simply gazes at him and his circumstances; we don’t get to know anything of his internal world. In comparison, Neusia, who stays behind, is shot in more dynamic closeup; though her scenes are so far and few between that she does not come off as a fully fledged character either. Costa certainly has a keen eye for the landscape and the working-class milieu of Mozambique, but his purely observational style reduces Gold Songs to a detached ethnographic portrait rather than a properly absorbing drama.
• Gold Songs is at the ICA, London, from 18 July.
