[3] After befriending Varela during the filming, and as he got to know her, Costa realized that she deserved her own movie.
Varela's character was married to a man and they were building a home, but he mysteriously disappeared.
Nearly 40 years later, she leaves Cape Verde for Lisbon to find him, only to discover that he died the previous week and she missed the funeral.
[3] The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw praised her performance as displaying "a massively imperturbable dignity and limpid gaze.
"[2] Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal writes that "Varela’s face is as expressive as a silent-film star.