Child’s Pose (***3/4)

A tragic accident forms the thread of this drama about a mother and her adult son. As far as I can tell, the film’s star, Luminita Gheorghiu, has been in every Romanian movie I’ve seen — The Death of Mr. Lazarescu…4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days…12:08 East of Bucharest…Beyond the Hills — but here gets a tour de force role playing Cornelia, a married, 60ish architect who tries to fix things when her son (Bogdan Dumitrache) speeds into a teenage boy, killing him. At first, the story suggests a commentary on class — Cornelia is comfortably well off compared to the victim’s family — and corruption, perhaps even a police procedural. Cornelia bullies the officers conducting the investigation and even bullies her own son into changing his statement.

The second half of the movie, though, moves more directly into the personal. We see why her son has been avoiding her, but for a long time he himself barely speaks. The title of the movie is a little oblique; it might refer to the son, who is married but retains a childish passivity at times, or his mother, whose love is the selfish love of a child. (Stylistically, the film is very much of a piece with the films above. Shot with little artifice, the film has no score and features handheld camera work. Many of the scenes are long. Despite this, the pacing is much faster than The Death of Mr. Lazarescu or Beyond the Hills. It’s a fairly short film that ends with an emotionally revelatory (though still ambiguous in terms of plot and interpretation) sequence that makes the heroine, if not exactly likeable (she rarely is), then human, and wonderfully complex.

IMDb link

viewed 2/19/14 7:30 at Gershman Y (PFS screening) and posted 2/19/14

Beyond the Hills (***)

This drama comes from Cristian Mungiu, the Romanian who made the deservedly acclaimed 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. That film tackled the subject of illegal abortion. This one is “inspired by” nonfiction books about an incident at an Orthodox monastery. The two main characters are two young women who grew up in the same orphanage but have not seen each other for some time. Meanwhile, one, Alina (Cristina Flutur), has worked abroad, and the other, Voichita (Cosmina Stratan), has joined a strict religious order led by a bearded priest and lives an ascetic lifestyle.
 
For a time, I expected Voichita to see this patriarchal set-up for what it is and rebel. But she appears content, whereas Alina appears unhappy and needy. She hopes to resume the once-close friendship — how close is merely implied— and has little sympathy for the religious order. Neither did I, but I appreciated that Mungiu takes what appears to be a neutral approach. It may be too much to say most people will truly understand the nuns’ decision to live as they do, but the filmmaker himself does not appear to impose a strong viewpoint (though the ending, based on an actual incident, leaves less room for interpretation).

Mungiu builds his stories from the accumulation of detail, taking an almost documentary-like approach. These are fixed characters, and we see their inner lives only in watching their behavior. Only Alina, a clearly troubled young woman, exhibits a volatility, but even she does not change much in the course of the story. The tension does not hinge on revelations of secrets, but on the inexorable collision of religious and secular world views. This is a clash of civilizations writ small; slowly, it builds toward inevitable conflict. But…slowly. I admired the realism (there is no musical score) and the precision of the filmmaking while feeling impatient for the story to get where it’s going. I suspect the latter feeling will predominate in most viewers.

IMDb link

viewed 10/23/12 7:00 pm at Ritz East  [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and reviewed 10/31/12–3/28/13

The Human Resources Manager (***)

In this unusual road movie, a burned-out Israeli HR rep finds himself unexpectedly involved in a family saga half a world away. Ostensibly, the manager is trying to honor an employee killed in a suicide bombing, but burials are always about the living, not the dead. Shot mostly in Romania, the film mixes light comedy, light melodrama, and a bit of adventure in a very picturesque manner.

IMDB link

Viewed 4/13/11 at Ritz East [Philadelphia Cinefest] and reviewed 4/13/11

Police, Adjective (**3/4)

Watching this, I recalled an old Saturday Night Live performance by the late comedian Andy Kaufman. Alone onstage, Kaufman began reading a passage from The Great Gatsby with a record player beside him. As the audience began growing impatient, he offered to play a record instead. Finally, he gave in to the audience and played the record...a recording of himself reading the same passage. It’s funny gag to recount, but the actual performance was three or four minutes of waiting for a single punch line. That kind of sums up director Corneliu Porumboiu’s follow-up to 12:08 East of Bucharest, a seriocomedy about quirky folk mulling over whether the death of communism had changed things in their small city . The characters here are less odd, but the overall low-key approach remains.

The premise is that a policeman, Cristi, has qualms about arresting a high school kid for a petty drug-possesion crime that will result in a prison term. This kind of moral question must come up a lot in the United States too, and is one worth exploring, but I wondered how, as presented, it would take up nearly two hours of screen time. The answer is that it doesn’t. I’ve got a pretty good tolerance for deliberate pacing, but probably this movie will bore the crap out of most filmgoers. Put in a music score and hire a ruthless editor and it would make an amusing 25-minute short, though, including most of the final sequence, in which Cristi too reads from a book.

Porumboiu has a style, notably a penchant for drab scenery, long takes, long, static shots, and asides that don’t advance the plot, although that last is not a bad thing. In one such aside, Cristi has a funny argument with his wife about the lyrics of a love song. Before that, we hear the entire song as Cristi sits at the table and eats dinner. The song finally ends…then it begins again. Andy Kaufman would’ve loved it.

IMDB link

viewed 2/3/10 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 2/3–4/10

California Dreamin' (**3/4)

The station master in a Romanian town ties up a train full of Kosovo-bound NATO soldiers for want of some paperwork. The movie (set in 1999), which is mostly a drama but has lightly comic overtones, follows the American commander’s (Armande Assante) increasing annoyance, the station master’s teen daughter’s attempts to pick up an American soldier (despite the language barrier), the mayor’s attempts to financially capitalize on the Americans’ “visit,” and more. Engaging, with a bit of cross-cultural commentary and a literally explosive ending, but not quite compelling.

IMDB link

viewed 4/8/08; reviewed 4/9/08; screened at Philadelphia Film Festival

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (***3/4)

Last year’s trio of unwed-mother comedies—Knocked Up, Waitress, Juno—may have obscured the fact that, in the United States, more than 20% of pregnancies, unwed or otherwise, are not carried to term. Thus Juno’s real-life counterparts may be as likely as not to seek abortions, but one must venture overseas to see the topic explored on film. (Tony Kaye’s well-regarded documentary on the subject, Lake of Fire, has not received a theatrical release.) Fortunately, by virtue of its grand prize win at Cannes, Christian Mungiu’s tense Romanian drama has earned an American release. Equally fortunately, the film is worthwhile even for those not particularly interested in Romania, abortion, or life under late-period communism.

IMDB link

viewed 2/12/08; reviewed 2/14/08

Severance (***1/2)

Think of The Office (the British version, thank you) reconfigured as a horror film and you get close to the sensibility of this bloody funny movie set in the woods of Eastern Europe. A motley group of coworkers for a weapons manufacturer has gathered for a corporate retreat. There’s the pothead, the tool of a boss, the American girl, and so on.

As one thing after another goes wrong, tensions flare, and that’s before anyone spots the large person stalking them. Well, anyone except the audience, who’s seen the opening teaser with the scared man hanging from the tree, and the pothead, whom the other characters don’t believe. The horror storyline is only a little better than the usual crazy-man-with-a-chainsaw scenario, but it’s deployed for maximum suspense.

The mayhem is extremely, though briefly, gruesome in a couple of places. The humor is welcome and demonstrates some of the personality of the characters. But it never undercuts the scares, which aren’t played for laughs.

In sum, terrifyingly funny.

[reviewed 5/31/07]

IMDB link