First Of All, Felicia
5 May, 2009 | By Dan Fainaru


Dirs/scr: Razvan Radulescu, Melissa de Raaf. Romania, France, Croatia, Belgium. 2009. 120 mins.



In his feature debut (working with Melissa de Raaf), screenwriter Razvan Radulescu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) displays a keen ear for dialogue, a gift for developing dramatic scenes and a talent for capturing and driving home some of the most sensitive issues troubling his countrymen at this point in time.

Though narratively repetitive and in sore need of trimming before it reaches the international marketplace, Felicia could find a niche audience thanks to the intensity of its separate scenes, the dark humour permeating even the most frustrating moments and two great performances from Ozana Oancea as a dutiful daughter crucified by her own best intentions and Ileana Cernat as her overwhelmingly doting mother.

Felicia (Oancea) is a youngish woman who left her home some 20 years ago, moved to the Netherlands, had a child, divorced, and made a career for herself in her adopted country but comes home faithfully every year to Bucharest to visit her parents. Every visit is a wrenching emotional experience which only reaches its climax on the day of her departure. Her father (Mentzel) is retired and sickly, her mother (Cernat) a portly, insistent, passive-aggressive woman who claims that all she does is sacrifice herself for her husband and her daughters and her efforts are never fully appreciated.

Plotwise, the film consists of a series of incidents which conspire to prevent Felicia from catching her flight back to Holland. Her sister never arrives to take her to the airport, the taxi ride through the hellish traffic of the Romanian capital takes forever, the airline assistants turn down all her emotional pleas and refuse to re-open the flight, decently priced alternatives that would bring her home in time to pick up her son from summer camp are unavailable and her ex-husband in Holland bluntly turns down her appeal for help and will not take the boy to his place for one night.

Picking up on such themes as the love-hate relationship between children and their parents, the backbone of the entire piece is the confrontation between Felicia, carrying her own guilt for having left her parents, for being a divorced single parent, for not being able to fulfil her obligation to her son in time, and so much more, and her mother, for whom Felicia is still a baby, to be indulged, goaded, encouraged, chided, reminded and corrected at all times.

Feliciais shot entirely on location and with live sound, reminiscent of a stage play with changes of scenery taking place in a confined stage space. Radulescu and de Raaf keep their two leading ladies on the edge throughout, before allowing Felicia the predictable final outburst in which she puts on the table all the grievances she has accumulated, not only in the last visit home, but in every one that preceded it. Oancea’s profoundly sincere rendering makes this scene palpably painful, while Cernat’s bewildered look expresses the shock of hearing out loud what she must have always suspected.

Police, Adjective
5 May, 2009 | By Dan Fainaru


Dir/scr/prod: Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania, 2009, 115 mins.


No festival worth its salt will want to miss Corneliu Porumboiu’s follow-up to the Cannes Camera D’Or-winning 12:08, East of Bucharest (2006). Not only does his new film, set for Un Certain Regard this year, confirm the promise of his debut, but it goes one step further in its sober attempt to achieve the maximum with the minimum of means. A tough nut to crack but worth every bit of the patience required to do so, this subtle, unassuming and yet smartly sophisticated film may look bewildering at first sight, but with festival exposure and critical support, seems destined for a solid art house career.

Though its simple approach would seem to skewer the pretentious pomposity of art films in general, Police, Adjective’s brilliant finale tackles such purely “arty” concepts as the discrepancy between words and their meanings, and the abyss separating even the most accurately phrased definitions from the sense they assume in everyday life. Straightforward and unadorned, it delivers a witty and wicked portrait not only of life in the small city of Vaslui – the same location Porumboiu used in his first film – but of the basic human dilemma of remaining faithful to what one believes in.

Cristi (Bucur), a young police inspector, shadows a teenager who allegedly purchases and sells pot to his fellow high school students. The suspect is followed from home to school, from school to a friend’s house, where the pair is joined by a girl who is then followed to her home. Cristi notes everything down, and the more he sees, the less convinced he is about the job he is supposed to do. Arresting a boy of sixteen for smoking pot will result in him being sent to prison for seven years and his entire future being destroyed: Cristi’s conscience won’t let him do that.

After avoiding his boss for days, he is finally ordered to make a full report and proceed to take immediate action. Cristi mentions his conscience and his boss surprisingly indulges him, bringing in a dictionary and showing Cristi that there is nothing in the definition of the word “conscience” which would prevent his acting as ordered and there is everything in the dictionary definition of the word “police” to justify taking action. This cold, precise and effective scene has the police captain (a tour de force performance by Vlad Ivanov, the abortionist in 4 months, 3 weeks…) demonstrating the absurd logic behind police work, leaving his subordinate, unconvinced but speechless, with no alternative but to do as he is told.

The clever simplicity of the visual language here draws the viewer’s imagination into play; there is no distracting music; the camera work never exceeds a horizontal pan; the bare-bones dialogue wastes no words. It all looks remarkably naïve and innocent, but most certainly isn’t. Dragos Bucur’s winning soulful sincerity perfectly suits the lead part, providing a natural patsy for the unscrupulous composition of Ivanov in the final sequence.

Production company/international sales

42 Km Film

+ 40 31 1006837

Executive producer

Marcela Ursu

Cinematography

Marius Panduru

Production designer

Mihaela Poenaru

Editor

Roxana Szel

Main cast

Dragos Bucur

Vlad Ivanov

Ion Stoica

Irina Saulescu

Cerasela Trandafir

Marian Ghenea

Cosmin Selesi

Serban Georgevici

Geroge Remes

Tales From The Golden Age (Amintiri Din Epoca De Aur)
19 May, 2009 | By Mike Goodridge

Dirs: Cristian Mungiu, Ioana Maria Uricaru, Hanno Hofer, Razvan Marculescu, Constantin Popescu. Romania, 2009, 134 mins (varied)


A multi-episode portmanteau comically unseating the propagandist myth that Ceausescu’s Romania was the “golden age” of communism, Tales From The Golden Age is another notch in the country’s film-making renaissance which focuses on day-to-day life under the dictatorship to warm and often hilarious effect. Written by Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu, who also directed one of the segments, it will be a crowd pleasing festival title around the world and could well stir up strong theatrical business in all the former Soviet nations.

International sales have already been plentiful – IFC prebought the US before Cannes – although its prospects in western arthouse markets may be hampered by the portmanteau form itself, an often unpopular style of cinema which rarely connects with audiences.

The version of the film which first screened in Cannes had only five episodes. A third and final screening on Wednesday 20 May will include Mungiu’s second directorial episode, bringing the total running time to 155 minutes. In Romania, the film will be released in two parts – four episodes as Tales Of Authority and two as Tales Of Love. The press notes call it a “film with variable geometry” designed to reflect the fact that Romanian audiences under Ceausescu never knew what to expect when they went to the cinema. Likewise, it was made as a collaborative effort and the individual director of each episode is not identified.

As a portmanteau, it is more coherent than most (ParisI Love You, Eros, Tokyo!, Triangle, Three Extremes) which are often hit and miss. Not only are the five films here consistently strong but the cumulative effect is to offer a surreal portrait of life in Romania in the 1980s where undertones of fear, corruption and imprisonment are never far away from the laughter and spirit which kept the people afloat.

Mungiu’s already significant name and the fact that the film actually generates plentiful laughs will strengthen Tales’ profile in the marketplace. And naysayers who believe that it won’t find an audience need only be reminded that Four Months took over $10m in worldwide grosses, extraordinary results for such a bleak movie.

The central concept here is to take the most well-known urban legends of the period and tell stories to illustrate them.

First film The Legend Of The Official Visit follows a town preparing for an official state visit as the townspeople faithfully obey every whimsical request of the organising committee. The shortest and probably the best of the five films, it’s a wonderfully absurdist portrait of how normal rural folk were forced to behave when officials came to town. When the Party Inspector (Pirvu) gets a phone call saying that the visit has been cancelled, they all get drunk and mount a carousel at a nearby fair. Unfortunately nobody is left on the ground to switch it off and they spin around all through the night.

Second film The Legend Of The Party Photographer continues the light-hearted vein as the state photographer (Birau) is instructed to touch up some photographs taken on the official state visit of France’s President Giscard d’Estang to Bucharest. The Frenchman appears taller than Ceausescu in the photographs, so he is instructed to put a hat on him to make their heights more level.

The ensuing debacle led to the only day in its history that the party paper Scienteia was not published.

The third episode The Legend Of The Chicken Driver is a more sombre affair, showing how hard it was to come by food in Romania in the “golden age”. Four Months abortionist Ivanov plays the driver of a chicken transport truck who is forbidden to stop on the way to his drop-off point until the night his wheels are stolen and he is forced to go to an inn run by a beautiful woman.

The fourth segment The Legend Of The Greedy Policeman, which will probably become the film’s most celebrated entry, illustrates how good food was used as currency among adults and children alike. When a country relative brings a live pig to a policeman and his family in the city, the family is faced with the dilemma of how to kill the pig. They opt to trap it in the kitchen and gas it, with catastrophic results.

The final segment The Legend Of The Air Sellers, which looks at attempts at private enterprise, also contains some laugh-out- loud moments as a young woman (Cavalioti) and man (Iacoban) plan an elaborate con on various apartment blocks to make money by selling empty bottles.

Bookended by Communist anthems and with its credits featuring footage of various party rallies, Tales film doesn’t feel the need to criticise the lunacy of the regime, but it finds plenty of mileage in its affectionate look at the men, women and children who had to survive it.

Francesca
(Romania)
By DEREK ELLEY

A Mandragora Movies production. (International sales: Mandragora, Bucharest.) Produced by Bobby Paunescu, Cristi Puiu. Executive producer, Anca Puiu.
Directed, written by Bobby Paunescu.

With: Monica Birladeanu, Dorian Boguta, Luminita Gheorghiu, Teodor Corban, Doru Ana, Dana Dogaru, Mihai Dorobantu, Dan Chiriac, Isabela Neamtu, Ion Sapdaru, Ion Besoiu.

Bobby Paunescu, producing partner of Cristi Puiu ("The Death of Mr. Lazarescu"), makes an intriguing debut as feature director with "Francesca," an immigrationyarn given substance by its blackly comic view of the characters and an involving perf as the titular wannabe emigree by Monica Birladeanu. Pic is largely festival and cable fare, with occasional arthouse dates in Europe likely.

Most of the script’s quiet humor trades on tensions between Romania and Italy, where more than 1 million Romanians reside and some politicians have made strident anti-Romanian pronouncements following violence by immigrants. (One politico, Alessandra Mussolini, who’s named in the movie, threatened to take out a lawsuit at the time of the pic’s Venice screening.)

Francesca (Birladeanu) is a 30-year-old kindergarten teacher who lives with her mother, Ana (Luminita Gheorghiu), and idealistically dreams of setting up a kids’ school in Rome to improve Romanians’ image in Italy. Her relationship with longtime b.f. Mita (Dorian Boguta) is going nowhere, but she still vacillates over the move as one after another friend or relative gives her advice.

The basic joke is that, though many Romanians think Italians are only a cut above uncivilized, they consider each other equally duplicitous. But Francesca is still in thrall of the post-communist dream that a better life is to be lived elsewhere, preferably in West Europe.

One of her friends, Maria (Isabela Neamtu), introduces her to a black marketeer, Pandele (Ion Sapdaru), who promises Francesca a job as a nurse to an old invalid near Milan. The deal, which involves her leaving almost immediately, has a bad smell: Francesca’s father, Ion (Teodor Corban), is against it, but her mother and Mita encourage her to go. Mita says he’ll join her soon, as soon as he’s finished a deal he’s working on, but his monetary problems conspire to prove a further drag on her plans.

Working with several cast members from "Lazarescu" (Birladeanu, Gheorghiu, Boguta), Paunescu draws simpatico performances from his players, despite often long takes from a fixed camera that pans back and forth between protags in a scene. The curiously clunky visual style -- clearly deliberate -- almost gives the film the flavor of a 35mm homemovie, though one that is always well lit, in both interiors and exteriors.

Offbeat style is also part and parcel of the movie’s black humor, including a sequence between Francesca and her money-lending godfather that’s almost surreal, and another in which Francesca and Ana are visited by a quietly menacing thug (Mihai Dorobantu) who’s looking for Mita.

With not a great deal happening plotwise, it’s in such grace notes that the appeal of the film lies. With a less skillful cast, the offbeat mixture wouldn’t work -- and the pic could still use some trims: A far too long scene of Mita recounting his money problems to Francesca is one obvious candidate.


Camera (color), Andrei Butica; editor, Ioachim Stroe; music, Petru Birladeanu; art director, Mihai Dorobantu; costume designers, Mirela Fraser, Monica Florescu; sound (Dolby Digital), Mirel Cristea, Sebastian Zsemlye, Alexandru Dragomir; assistant director, Mariuca Petre. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Horizons), Sept. 3, 2009. Running time: 97 MIN. (Romanian, Russian dialogue)

Odličan film! mislim da se davao na Slobodnoj zoni, al sam ga propustila, pa sam ga naknadno našla. u pravu su ovi što u tekstu kažu da ima izgled arty filma - dugi, statični kadrovi bez dijaloga, skoro da nema saundtrek nego sve muzika unutar kadrova, s radija ili jutjuba (u genijalnoj sceni u kojoj žena od policajca petsto puta pušta neku rumunsku verziju jelene tomašević npr.), ali takav pristup ne smeta jer je u vezi sa dilemom glavnog junaka koja je sasvim realna i s kojom možeš da se identifikuješ. ima dve ključne, nešto duže scene u filmu (to me podsetilo na Glad, na onu ogromnu scenu razgovora, što u oba filma deluje kao da reditelj ima potrebu da za junaka zamrzne vreme i napravi mu priliku da se o njegovoj dilemi, ideologiji itd. razgovara umesto da se ova razreši kroz akciju).inače, ovaj film odlično pokazuje zašto ni kod nas nije moglo da bude krimića ili policijskih trilera, samo što to obrće u svoju korist, pa umesto peripetija u rešavanju slučaja, policajac prolazi kroz peripetije birokratizovanog sistema, javašluka u zgradi policije, pa ima i tih komičnih scena. ono što me fasciniralo, između ostalog, je što imaš utisak da je film bez problema mogao da bude srpski, samo kapiram da nekom od nas padne na pamet da od tog zapleta napravi nešto verovatno bi pomislio da je suviše malo i nebitno, pa je i dobar primer u tom smislu...

A na čemu si ga gledala?

Film je bio na programu FAFa 2010, ovdašnji distriuter je Cinears, a ima ga na internet ponudi.

skinula ga s neta

Evo i nove ponude.

The.Rest.Is.Silence.2007.DVDRip.XviD-LAP



Synopsis: In 1911-12, the Romanian movie director Grigore Brezianu and the financial tycoon Leon Popescu made together the 2 hours long movie “Romania’s Independence” – an as faithful as possible screen adaptation of the real Independence War that had been fought in 1877. Now, “Restul e tacere” tells us, in a loose and half-fictionalized way, the story of this movie making.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0839967/