Uma Segunda Juventude

An intimate epic wherein present and past move as one, Colossal Youth (Costa’s English-language title for Juventude em marcha, or Youth on the March) chronicles Ventura, the towering Cape Verdean who has assumed the role of surrogate “father” to an untold number of characters around Lisbon and its now-razed neighbourhood of Fontaínhas. Through Ventura’s ghost-like visitations to figures such as Vanda Duarte (the central personage of Costa’s previous In Vanda’s Room) and repeated recollections of his past life as a newly migrated manual labourer, Costa explores the nature, and necessity, of storytelling in the course of the human adventure.

When the single middle-aged Luis travels from Barcelona to bury the remains of his mother in the vault of his family in Segovia, he is lodged by his aunt Pilar in her old house where he spent his summer of 1936. He meets his cousin Angelica, who was his first love, living on the first floor with her husband and daughter, and he recalls his childhood in times of the Spanish Civil War entwined with the present.

Al cabo de los años, Luis vuelve a Segovia trayendo desde Barcelona los restos de su madre para inhumarlos en el panteón familiar. Allí pasaba los veranos, en casa de su tía Pilar y la prima Angélica. La guerra civil retuvo a Luis en Segovia, lejos de sus padres y la convivencia con Angélica despertó sus primeros sentimientos amorosos. El hombre evoca aquellos días y vuelve a su infancia con una prima Angélica casada y madre de una hija.