by Augustin Cupșa

In 1984, at the ACIN gala, the top prize was shared ex aequo by Mircea Veroiu and Dan Pița, and the one for male performance by Gheorghe Visu and Claudiu Bleonț, who had embodied Sarca and Horațiu in Să mori rănit din dragoste de viață (To Die Wounded from a Love of Life, dir. Mircea Veroiu, 1983). This is not a matter of coincidences or parallel paths—facts that remain confined to statistics and to the LLMs used to train the successors of Claude and ChatGPT—but rather the crowning of a long exchange of ideas, aesthetic formulas, and actors between two directors between whom a friendly emulation had formed, one that would mark Romanian cinema of the 1970s and ‘80s. Let us not forget that the year before, Gheorghe Visu had acted in Dan Pița’s celebrated Faleze de nisip (Sand Cliffs), but also in Mircea Veroiu’s Sfârșitul nopții (The End of the Night), while Claudiu Bleonț acted that same year in the other film awarded by ACIN in 1984, Dreptate în lanțuri (Justice in Chains), and two years earlier in Concurs (The Contest), also by Dan Pița.

The first collaboration between Mircea Veroiu and Dan Pița—classmates and 1969 graduates of the IATC—took place immediately after they finished their studies, on the documentary Apa ca un bivol negru (Water Like a Black Buffalo), rightly considered the manifesto film of the ‘70s generation. The other directors were Andrei Cătălin Băleanu, Petre Bokor, and Youssouf Aidaby, and the cinematography was signed by, among others, such heavyweights as Iosif Demian, Dinu Tănase, Ion Marinescu, and Nicolae Mărgineanu. The film concentrated on the catastrophic floods of the spring of 1970 in Transylvania, but not in the way the Sahia documentaries had done until then; rather, far more poetically, loosely structured, without a screenplay in the proper sense, combining reportage with the cinematic essay. In place of the omniscient, artificial, and political commentary, room was made for the flood victims telling their own story—the people caught up in the natural phenomenon, and not in party propaganda and official figures. As a consequence, the Culture Commission withdrew the film from cinemas and put it on the index until 1989.

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PREMIERE OF THE WEEK

TO DIE WOUNDED BY THE LOVE OF LIFE
by Mircea Veroiu

Thursday, August 27^th, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

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by Mihai Fulger

In the Romanian film industry of the 1980s, film for young audiences underwent an unprecedented development (one with little chance of being repeated, despite the recent efforts of a few filmmakers). I am not referring solely to animation, where the “Animafilm” Studio accounted—chiefly through its series aimed above all at the youngest viewers—for 40% of the hard currency earned from the national cinema’s exports. For its part, live-action film for children and teenagers, generally promoting optimistic messages, expanded spectacularly. Thus, in the most depressing years of the Ceaușescu dictatorship, Romanians on screen seemed happier than ever.

While in the field of feature films for teenagers Nicolae Corjos, with his Liceenii (The High-Schoolers) series, had no rival in the second half of the decade, in children’s film a trio had established itself, made up of Elisabeta Bostan, Ion Popescu Gopo, and Gheorghe Naghi. In the 1980s, however, alongside these three leading directors, other filmmakers—both established and up-and-coming—also took on the genre. Among them were Adrian Petringenaru (Cireșarii / The Cherry-Tree Boys, 1984; Aripi de zăpadă / Wings of Snow, 1985; Cetatea ascunsă / The Hidden Fortress, 1987), Nicu Stan (Vreau să știu de ce am aripi / I Want to Know Why I Have Wings, 1984), Iosif Demian (Piciu / The Little One, 1985), Savel Știopul (Mușchetarii în vacanță / The Musketeers on Vacation, 1985), and Mircea Moldovan (Expediția / The Expedition, 1989).

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WHY DOES THE FOX HAS A TAIL
by Cornel Diaconu

Thursday, August 20^th, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

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by Dinu-Ioan Nicula

In the wake of his failure, in the 1980s, at the entrance examination for the film-directing section of the IATC—which came about partly because he did not heed the advice of his mentor, the late Alexandru Tocilescu, to apply for theatre directing, for which he had prepared him—the tenacious Dan Chișu was left with a dissatisfaction toward the Romanian artistic world, which he transposed into a soft satire with his first screenplay, submitted to a CNC competition in 2007. Ursul (The Bear) was the allegory of the Romanian “circus” of derisory celebrities, with mores defined by a coarse Balkanism, and the very story of its approval—after it had initially been ranked below the line—falls within this same fiefdom.

In any case, after that momentary rejection, Dan Chișu turned toward the idea of independent production, transposing the spirit of improvisation (which he had cultivated at Cafe Deko) into the ambitious Website Story (2010), which combined the use of the digital camera with a mix of professional and amateur actors, in a hard story, partly marked by the realism of the gunshot, partly dominated by the phantasmatic register of the joint and the vodka. According to the director-author, the film had no script proper—Crina Semciuc, Costel Bojog, Diana Gurscă, and Oreste Teodorescu were steered by the inspiration of the moment—but, at the same time, Dan Chișu had begun, in 2009, on the basis of a clearly outlined screenplay, the shooting of Ursul; in the meantime the project had gained a proven producer (Libra Film) and, consequently, the CNC’s confidence to fund it as a debut film. A work that would no longer be his opera prima (having premiered in 2011)—yet even this is part of the continuum of paradoxes that have marked Dan Chișu’s activity.

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PREMIERE OF THE WEEK

THE BEAR
by Dan Chișu

Thursday, August 13^th, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

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by Bogdan Jitea

Before becoming the most important Romanian screenwriter of the communist era, Titus Popovici was a promising prose writer, making his debut at just twenty-five with the novel Străinul (The Stranger, 1955), followed three years later by Setea (The Thirst, 1958). Both are set chronologically in the turbulent period of the mid-1940s that marks the collapse of the old regime and the gradual yet rapid installation of the communists in power in postwar Romania. Before long, the two novels were adapted for the screen: Setea in 1961 by the director Mircea Drăgan, and Străinul three years later by Mihai Iacob.

Unlike the first film, which has as its social context the Transylvanian village world thrown into turmoil by the effects of the agrarian reform initiated by the communists, Străinul is set in an urban frame—an unspecified city, yet easily recognizable as the Arad in which the writer was born and spent his childhood. The viewer is quickly ushered into the atmosphere typical of a high school of long standing, with a strict hierarchy and discipline. Popovici is a screenwriter attentive to nuance, managing to make efficient use of narrative devices to capture the characteristics of an entire era, such as the episode in which a Jewish pupil is bullied by several classmates. Although we are dealing with a slight anachronism—since by 1944 the education system no longer operated under even the restrictive numerus clausus, which had allowed an extremely small percentage of Jews to attend Romanian schools, having moved instead to the numerus nullus that imposed a total ban—the sequence serves to establish the antisemitic climate of the old regime.

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PREMIERE OF THE WEEK

THE STRANGER
by Mihai Iacob

Thursday, August 06^th, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

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by Augustin Cupșa

Adapted from Liviu Rebreanu’s eponymous 1927 novel, Sergiu Nicolaescu’s Ciuleandra brings back into discussion a controversial subject that takes on new meanings in every social era: uxoricide. A complex and sophisticated personality, Liviu Rebreanu is one of the few writers to have reinvented himself with each book: Ion and Răscoala (The Uprising), Pădurea spânzuraților (The Forest of the Hanged), Adam și Eva (Adam and Eve), and every short story—from Ițic Ștrul, dezertor (Ițic Ștrul, Deserter) to the present one—take on different styles and themes, yet never lose the signature of a singular author, obsessively preoccupied with human nature and psychological vulnerabilities.

At the stage of writing the novella Ciuleandra, Liviu Rebreanu was abreast of naturalist theory and had already succeeded, with great success, in drawing the portrait of the moral guilt that ultimately leads to suicide as an implacable fate, in The Forest of the Hanged. In Ciuleandra, however, published five years later, one sees how psychoanalytic mechanisms are also at work within the epic body—a theory, at the time, still at the dawn of its course. The book’s subject has been debated intensely and at length, not only by literary critics but also by psychologists and psychiatrists, the latter finding in Puiu Faranga the author of a crime that is hard to decipher. In the penumbra of the psychological conflict and its ingenious articulation, the writer carefully weaves the social plane: the silent confrontation between the poor but vigorous peasantry and the cruel, degenerate boyar class, which can find its salvation only at the expense of those who have remained close to the land.

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PREMIERE OF THE WEEK

CIULEANDRA
by Sergiu Nicolaescu

Thursday, July 30^th, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

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by Augustin Cupșa

At a time when some film authors made total compromises and fell into line with the socialist realism of the post-1947 years, others were marginalized (Victor Iliu, or Jean Georgescu), and still others sought, later on, refined forms of aesthetic opposition (Lucian Pintilie, Dan Pița), Malvina Urșianu stands as a figure apart, as a formula of aesthetic resistance.

She first graduated from the experimental directing course taught by Jean Georgescu, then served as his assistant director on the commissioned documentaries Petrolul (Oil, 1949) and Pădurile (The Forests, 1950), and afterwards on the commissioned features În sat la noi (In Our Village, dir. Jean Georgescu, Victor Iliu, 1951), Mitrea Cocor (dir. Victor Iliu and Marietta Sadova, 1952), and Nepoții gornistului (The Bugler’s Grandsons, dir. Dinu Negreanu, 1953). Formed in the style of the masters Jean Georgescu and Victor Iliu (selected for the Cannes Film Festival with La moara cu noroc / The Mill of Good Luck, 1955), Malvina Urșianu would change direction toward a politically adapted modernism.

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PREMIERE OF THE WEEK

A LIGHT ON THE 10^th FLOOR
by Malvina Urșianu

Thursday, July 23^th, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

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by Bogdan Jitea

In the mid-1960s, the ideological project of a national cinematic epic took shape in the minds of Communist cultural officials, one that set out to group the historical films into a veritable visual treatise on national history. By connecting to a past reinterpreted in the political key of the present, the regime sought to legitimize itself domestically. Cinema, with its immense capacity to reach into the deep strata of society, played an essential role in this vast propaganda effort. The project’s chief promoter, and almost certainly its architect, Mihnea Gheorghiu, at the time vice-president of the State Committee for Culture and Art and president of the Cinematography Council, announced, in a series of articles published in the press, the commitment to complete and conclude by the end of the decade the epic conceived to “set down our people’s history on screen,” inaugurated with the patriotic films Lupeni 29 (1962) and Tudor (1963), the latter after a screenplay of his own (cf. Mihnea Gheorghiu, “National Cinema,” in Contemporanul, no. 31 (981) of 30 July 1965, pp. 1–2). What is striking in this account of the project’s beginnings is the omission of Neamul Șoimăreștilor (The Șoimărești Clan, 1964), which would later be included in every listing of the historical films in the national epic cycle. At the time Gheorghiu was writing, Neamul Șoimăreștilor tended to be regarded as belonging rather to the subgenre of screen adaptations of historical novels, as would, somewhat later, Frații Jderi (The Jderi Brothers, 1974) and Întoarcerea lui Vodă Lăpușneanu (The Return of Voivode Lăpușneanu, 1979), than strictly to the national cinematic epic.

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Premiere of the week

THE ȘOIMĂREȘTI CLAN
by Mircea Drăgan

Thursday, July 16^th, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

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by Lucian Georgescu

It has already been two years since Cinepub launched its new editorial approach: from a single voice—at times monotonous and repetitive—belonging to the editorial desk, to a polyphonic concert, in different registers and styles, of diverse authors—some of them established film critics and historians, others unknown, film scholars in the making or newcomers to writing about cinema, coming from varied cultural, professional, and academic backgrounds. The reason is not merely the wish to offer you a diversity of viewpoints, to cast old and new films in a new light and from different angles, but is part of the cinepub.ro creed: film archiving seen as part of Cohen-Séat’s plurivalent concept of filmology (1946), a fluid undertaking, to my mind, which today migrates toward what Sian Barber (2016) calls “film as a source”—that tendency in academic research to use film as a resource, a corpus of scholarly study for all manner of fields: history, geography, anthropology, philology, philosophy, sociology, belles-lettres, cultural studies. Little by little, the roster of authors and the archive of the Cinepub newsletter (christened, as of this year, the “Cineletter”) has grown extremely large. The texts are the real wealth and the only “property” of cinepub.ro: while the films we present to you belong to the rights holders who license them to us for contractually limited periods and territories, the texts of our “letters” belong forever to the Cinepub universe—with the authors’ due signature, of course. And Cinepub does its faithful duty of placing them in the public space free of charge, through the weekly dispatch of the cineletter. They are ours, everyone’s—and here I include, of course, you too, our readers and viewers. Beyond their number and their diversity, the tendency is for these texts to grow ever more ample, more complex—true academic studies, some of them, like the one accompanying tonight’s premiere. The number of Cineletter subscribers is, however, minuscule (a few thousand only) compared with that of the viewers (around 60 million a year). Of course, “video content is king,” says the theory of online marketing, and the difference between the two sectors—that of writing and that of the image—is understandable; but is it really so great? Seriously? We believe there can be more than a few thousand readers of the only (a revelation I had not long ago!) film magazine in Romania. A publication with weekly editorials, gathered into an annual anthology of the most accomplished texts of the previous season. Thus was born “Cinepub the book,” in collaboration with Polirom; the first edition, Cinepub 1.0, was published in 2025: if 1.0 stood for the first volume, as well as the first decade of activity, the one due this autumn—named (apparently without much inspiration) 2.0—marks not only our platform’s entry into its second decade of existence but also its evolution: a far larger number of authors, an ampler and more complex editorial corpus, multiple zones of cultural provenance among the authors included in the volume, and also a foreshadowing of the launch (in 2027) of version 2.0 of the cinepub.ro platform. A far more beautiful, user-friendly version, in which the curation is showcased as it deserves. If in the old days we called cinepub.ro, half in jest and half in earnest, “a Netflix-on-the-Dâmbovița,” I believe 2.0 will earn the name “a Mubi-on-the-Danube”—a phrase that rightly tosses out any possible pejorative shade.

Tonight we “christen” as a film scholar Răzvan Nicolescu, an anthropologist specializing in material and visual culture. Răzvan earned a doctorate at University College London, has also worked at Imperial College, and is the author of Social Media in Southeast Italy: Crafting Ideals (2016) and co-author of How the World Changed Social Media (2016). He is currently a Research Fellow at NEC (New Europe College), Bucharest. Răzvan makes his debut with a demanding film: Hanul dintre dealuri (The Inn Among the Hills), inspired by Caragiale’s fantastic prose. Cristiana Nicolae’s cinema is seen from a new angle—that of a young researcher, educated in the West, who adopts a viewpoint entirely different from what has been written so far—little, for that matter, where the “fugitive” Cristiana Nicolae is concerned, an unjustly forgotten director whom Cinepub salutes across the Ocean. For Răzvan, Cristiana Nicolae’s cinema was a lovely surprise, and the result is a veritable chapter of an anthropological inquiry—hence the length of the text, which obliges us to make a change to the cineletters: from now on they will be presented only in part in the email, and those interested will be able to read them in full on the site. In this way we shall avoid the blunders of editorial truncation, as happened recently with a text signed by our colleague Andrei Gorzo, subsequently re-sent in order to rectify the error.

The Inn Among the Hills:
Rebellion and Conformity in a Seemingly Closed 19th-Century World

by Răzvan Nicolescu

The Inn Among the Hills, 1988, directed by Cristiana Nicolae, follows the journey of Ștefan, a minor boyar drawn by the prospect of an advantageous marriage to Kira, the daughter of the polcovnic Iordache (polcovnic: a colonel-rank militia commander). The polcovnic is a powerful man who built his fortune and influence quickly, by catching rebels for the Prince (Vodă) and seizing their homes and wealth. Along the way, Ștefan stops at Mânjoală’s inn, where he is fascinated by the innkeeper, a beautiful woman held to possess magical powers, who offers him mystery, love, freedom, and, perhaps, the chance to become someone else. The film traces the tension between the allure of these promises and the conformity demanded by the social order.

The fantastic in Caragiale’s short story La hanul lui Mânjoală (At Mânjoală’s Inn) is developed by Cristiana Nicolae in order to explore deeper and more uncomfortable themes. The film offers a direct yet nuanced critique of the arbitrariness and violence of power, of social injustice, of the impossibility of individual freedom, and, above all, of the mechanisms by which people come to accept and acquiesce in situations of domination.

Read anthropologically, the film stages the confrontation between, on the one hand, the control the powerful exercise over people, their desires, and their destinies, and, on the other, a possible escape from this logic through the activation of mechanisms situated beyond the social order.

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Premiere of the week

The Inn Among the Hills
by Cristiana Nicolae

Thursday, July 9^th, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

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by Augustin Cupșa

Dan Chișu’s 2013 film Déjà vu is a surprise and a bet paid off, in more ways than one. Surprising, first, because it looks rather like an experimental film—just 72 minutes long—in which the director steps away from the ambitious projects that set out to map the contemporary (București NonStop, 2015) or Romania’s recent history (Aniversarea, 2017), and concentrates on a single morning in the life of an illegitimate couple, ending up saying more than when the aims are ambitious. Surprising, a second time, through its narrative structure, its twist in the plot, and its cinematic manner. And, not least, through the psychological substratum the story brings to light as an added value.

Read the full review here

Premiere of the week

Déjà Vu by Dan Chișu

Thursday, July 2^nd, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

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by Mihai Fulger

By 1971, the filmmaker Savel Știopul (the centenary of whose birth fell on 15 June 2026) had already produced two peaks of his fiction filmography: Anotimpuri (Seasons, 1964) and Ultima noapte a copilăriei (The Last Night of Childhood, 1968). The second title, shot in 1966, had been the object of protracted wrangling with producers and censors, undergoing drastic changes before its premiere. After a five-year absence from the Buftea sound stages (during which, however, he had signed four documentary shorts), the director agreed to take on a screenplay (by the writer Tudor Popescu) proposing a genre he had never worked in before: the spolicier. This is a hybrid between the policier / crime film and the spy film, or, in the RSR version, between the “militia film” and the “Securitate film.”

The spolicier turns on the confrontation between the “party and state organs” (the militiamen and the Securitate men in particular) and criminals who, as a rule, either come from the “decadent West” or have dealings with “foreign agencies” or “imperialist forces”; it is not hard to guess who emerges victorious from this confrontation. The hybrid genre was launched on native big screens through films such as Alarmă în munți (Alarm in the Mountains, Dinu Negreanu, 1955), Vultur 101 (Eagle 101, Andrei Călărașu, 1957), and Secretul cifrului (The Secret of the Cipher, Lucian Bratu, 1960). At first, things were very simple: the antagonists, who schemed unscrupulously against the new social order installed in the country, were former fascists or Legionaries, bandits or swindlers, “rotten capitalists” and reactionaries, or defectors returned for villainous ends (the theft of revolutionary inventions or state secrets, the recovery of fortunes hidden upon their abrupt departure from the country, and so on).

During the “thaw” period, once the regime had consolidated itself, the spolicier evolved under the direct influence of foreign models. For example, between 1965 and 1969, Romanian Television broadcast, with great success, the series The Saint, which adapted Leslie Charteris’s bestsellers, foregrounding the resourceful and charming detective Simon Templar (played on the small screen by Roger Moore). Aventuri la Marea Neagră (Black Sea Adventures), the spolicier with comic touches (just like the British series), directed by Savel Știopul, has as its protagonist the counterintelligence captain George Martin, played by Florin Piersic, a character described in interviews, by both the filmmakers and the actor himself, as a “Romanian Simon Templar.” What is more, an explicit nod to The Saint is slipped into the film’s final sequence.

It should be recalled that Florin Piersic had one of his first film roles, the steelworker Petre Orșa, while still a student at the Institute, in Savel Știopul’s debut feature Aproape de soare (Close to the Sun, 1961). After a decade in which he had been cast chiefly in period films and screen fairy tales, the actor was given a second role in a “contemporary” film, the Securitate man George Martin, by the same director.

Since production began in the very month Nicolae Ceaușescu was setting out his “July Theses,” Black Sea Adventures was still able to enjoy a degree of freedom, evident, for instance, in its cosmopolitan atmosphere. Tellingly, the hotel on the Romanian coast around which the plot revolves, ”a hotel favoured by eccentrics and by overworked businesspeople from all over the world” (according to the general who sends the protagonist on his mission), is called “Babylon” (in reality, the film was shot mainly at the “Europa” hotel in Eforie Nord). In this new “Babylon,” people speak, among other tongues, English, French, German, and Swedish.

The narrative premise is provided by the invention, by Romanian scientists, of an innovative rocket fuel, tested at an experimental range not far from the hotel. Naturally, the world’s greatest spies descend on our coast to get their hands on the invention, ready to eliminate without hesitation anyone who might try to thwart their plans. The Romanian counterintelligence officer, a master of disguises (like Leslie Charteris’s “Saint”), and, at the same time, a surprising Shakespearean exegete—infiltrates the hotel to expose the network of foreign agents, passing himself off as the reporter Herbert G. Stronghton of the magazine Irving Star of Ohio. There follows a long series of comical fights, tailings through the hotel and car chases, along with mysteries, murders, false leads, interrogations and, of course, unmaskings.

Black Sea Adventures also marks the screen debut of the singer Corina Chiriac. Her character, Ana Barbara, performs for the hotel’s international guests several hit songs, to music by Harry Maiorovici and lyrics by Nina Cassian, and between the musical-choreographic numbers she is a spy who takes orders from an enigmatic mastermind. In the roles of the other potential villains in this huis clos there also appear Mircea Șeptilici (Richard Demster), the theatre director George Rafael (Frank Hindermann, “Checkmate”), Fabian Gavriluțiu (Gunnar Thunberg), Mihai Vasile Boghiță (”The Pharaoh,” or “The Pirate”), Mihai Badiu (Ikamo Tahikava), Dumitru Rucăreanu (Nuny Iordan, Barbara’s manager), Zephi Alșec (Tomescu, the hotel manager), and even the director Savel Știopul himself (”Professor” Gogu Alamahus, the conjuror). And George Martin, alias Herbert G. Stronghton, in the breaks from his counterespionage work, also seduces, without too much effort, Ioana (an English teacher and interpreter, the unhappily cast debutante Dana Crișan) and Lola (a huntress of foreign tourists, Carmen Maria Strujac). This comes as no great surprise, for, as the critic Al. Racoviceanu (Cinema) observed, the “lively and appealing” Florin Piersic “fills the screen with his smile.”

In the wake of the box-office success of Black Sea Adventures (over 6.7 million tickets sold in cinemas across the country), to which was added an Honourable Mention received in 1973 at the International Workers’ Film Festival in Prague, the director released another spolicier in 1974, Agentul straniu (The Strange Agent), again with Florin Piersic in the lead. But before we (re)watch the star, who turned ninety earlier this year, as a brilliant inventor, let us follow him as the seductive “Saint” from the Securitate, thereby paying tribute, on his centenary, to the filmmaker Savel Știopul as well.

Premiere of the week: Black Sea Adventures by Savel Știopul, Tuesday, June 30, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

Cinepub is the one and only, legally operating and free of charge, AVoD platform, dedicated to the Romanian cinema: independent, contemporary, or classic. Our comittment to remain “free” means hundreds of monthly hours of volunteer work of a (very) small team of passionate individuals.

Your donation can help us cover some of the costs of securing some distribution rights, covering the basic costs or just keeping the platform updated; in a nutshell, to survive! If you like what we do, if you read what we write, if you watch the films we show, consider supporting us. We need your help. Thank you!

by Ionuț Mareș

The reputation of Romanian cinema in the 1990s is not among the best. Even critical attempts to reassess the period have largely ended up cataloguing the many blemishes of the films of that first post-December decade.

It has been said—and continues to be said—that this cinema, emerging in a society beset by so many social, economic, and political problems, was loud, strident, and vulgar. One could argue that it was a reflection of the turmoil of a country only just freed from communism. It is certainly still awaiting its recovery (perhaps through new, bold curatorial programmes—assuming the films were also restored).

After the harsh censorship of the pre-Revolution years came the unshackling, including — or perhaps especially — for the filmmakers who had worked under the previous regime.

Communism could be denounced (and blamed for everything); the transition was the squalid backdrop against which most stories unfolded; the infamous secret policemen and crooked politicians became almost omnipresent characters (pulling every string from the shadows); sex was something dirty and convulsive; and more and more actresses were stripped bare on the big screen by male directors, simply because now it was permitted.

No director stood apart from this way of making cinema, and the exceptions amount to a handful of individual titles (an E pericoloso sporgersi, Nae Caranfil’s 1993 debut, or An Unforgettable Summer, the splendid period film—though with strong references to the present—released by Lucian Pintilie in 1994).

Paradoxically, not even a filmmaker like Mircea Veroiu — whom the history of cinema under communism has remembered as a calophile director, the author of decorous adaptations and tame contemporary films, without eccentricities or daring — escaped the air of the times unscathed.

Ironically, though, the adaptation of a cult novel as resistant to adaptation as Mateiu Caragiale’s Craii de Curtea-Veche (Rakes of the Old Court) could have served as a good pretext, a convenient and fitting cover, for an unshackled cinema—one that would also reflect, in its very form, a decadent, vicious, festering world like the one captured in the book. One may assume the filmmaker’s intuition ran in that direction: to draw an implicit parallel between the twilight of the literary universe created by Mateiu Caragiale and the post-revolutionary decline.

Instead, here too Veroiu keeps to his elegant, almost cold style, which seems ill-suited to a subject that pulses as his does. The only excesses he permits himself are, as with many of his colleagues, again in the way women are represented: with the exception of the young woman played by Ilinca Goia, portrayed as rather naive, whose identity is nonetheless constructed exclusively in relation to the men who court her or the father who controls her (Gheorghe Dinică), all the other female characters of any substance end up without their clothes at some point, or are described as out to feather their nests at the men’s expense. Viewed strictly from this angle, the film has not aged well.

Granted, this is dramaturgically justified: the four protagonists—Pașadia (Mircea Albulescu), Pantazi (Ovidiu Iuliu Moldovan), Cara (Marius Bodochi), and Pirgu (Răzvan Vasilescu), spend their nights in houses of ill repute and poker dens. But even here Veroiu seems to set himself limits, out of decorum: we never see the men even partially naked, and sex is never shown. The passions are suggested rather than truly shown.

The escapades remain, artificial as their staging is, the most interesting moments, because the supposed depravity of these men who claim to descend from wealthy families works as a counterweight to the film’s other scenes, those in which Pașadia, Pantazi, and Cara talk, in homes, restaurants, or natural settings evoking a glorious past, about their origins and the world of bygone days, filmed in slow pans.

Here the dialogues are, unfortunately, far too bookish and affected to be stimulating, and the only thing that rouses them from their torpor is Veroiu’s playful decision to occasionally superimpose, within the same frame, the present and the bygone tales of figures like Pașadia and Pantazi, who pass nonchalantly from one set into another. It is an unexpected departure from an otherwise thoroughly classical direction.

While Pașadia, Pantazi, and Cara remain characters of no great depth, almost like ghosts who have washed up in a world that is no longer theirs, Pirgu is somewhat better articulated, the new society is his, and it is no accident that the ending shows him as a successful politician.

His cynicism and abjection make him the more compelling, of course, and Răzvan Vasilescu is like a fish in water in such a role: a manipulative clown, well practised in intrigue, yet to whose moral rottenness his fellow revellers feel drawn. And setting him, even if only in two or three sequences, alongside Gheorghe Dinică (Arnoteanu), another great actor, from an earlier generation, a specialist in scoundrels, is one of Veroiu’s most inspired decisions.

It is hard to say whether this strange film The Old Court Libertines has passed the test of time, three decades after its release. The feeling persists that the originality of the literary source was not given the most fitting cinematic form.

It is clearly a film indebted to its era, and I admit I watched it with indulgence, there is something touching, and not without audacity, in Veroiu’s gesture of circling this canonical novel at a historical moment when such escapes might have seemed an extravagance.

Premiere of the week: The Old Court Libertines by Mircea Veroiu, Thursday, June 25, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

Cinepub is the one and only, legally operating and free of charge, AVoD platform, dedicated to the Romanian cinema: independent, contemporary, or classic. Our comittment to remain “free” means hundreds of monthly hours of volunteer work of a (very) small team of passionate individuals.

Your donation can help us cover some of the costs of securing some distribution rights, covering the basic costs or just keeping the platform updated; in a nutshell, to survive! If you like what we do, if you read what we write, if you watch the films we show, consider supporting us. We need your help. Thank you!

by Mihai Fulger

In the early 1960s, the great film director Jean Georgescu—who had given Romanian cinema two masterpieces, O noapte furtunoasă (A Stormy Night, 1943) and Directorul nostru (Our Director, 1955) — was passing through a baleful period in his career.

First, Directorul nostru deeply displeased the men of the system, and as such it was viciously attacked for its author’s “misguided artistic vision.” Perfectly understandable, since—as Nae Caranfil would later put it, in an essay written at the age of twenty-three—the film was a “comedy of current affairs” whose “polemical verve” and “satirical character” placed it “in the zone of the Caragialean spirit.” And what could have been less suited to addressing the dawn of a new world than caustic humour of Caragialean descent? Jean Georgescu was ardently defended by Victor Iliu, but Sică Alexandrescu extended his campaign against the filmmaker to his earlier work as well; the theatre director went so far as to brand O noapte furtunoasă “a film that reduced Caragiale’s work to a vaudeville full of insignificant happenings.”

Because he refused the compromises and the rushed, campaign-style corner-cutting of the industry’s decision-makers, Jean Georgescu was replaced at the helm of two new Caragiale adaptations (Două lozuri / Two Lottery Tickets and Telegrame / Telegrams) by the young Gheorghe Naghi and Aurel Miheles, and was also forced to return the advance he had received for writing two other screenplays. The blows did not stop there: refusing to recognize the “Alexandru Mihalescu” Conservatory of Dramatic Art—from which Jean Georgescu had graduated in 1923—as an institution of higher education, the officials of the Bucharest Film Production Centre invalidated his standing as a director and demoted him. What is more, in 1959, Jean Georgescu was forced to leave the Bucharest Film Studio.

There was little consolation for the suspended director (tellingly, in 1975, in his final film appearance, he would play the Director—a role inspired by his own biography—in Iulian Mihu’s Nu filmăm să ne-amuzăm / We Don’t Film for Fun). During that bleak stretch, Jean Georgescu was approached by the “Danube Delta” Experimental Reed Research Station to make a short documentary and, subsequently, was taken on as an artistic instructor at the Bucharest House of Folk Creation, to train two troupes of amateur actors; it was on this occasion that he also met the nurse who, in 1994, two months before his death, would become his wife.

In 1963, the sixty-year-old director was called back to practise his profession. Not at the main studio, admittedly, but at “Alexandru Sahia,” which specialized in documentaries; yet what mattered most to Jean Georgescu was that he had once again been entrusted with a film project.

The pretext for Lanterna cu amintiri (Lantern of Memories) is announced from the very start: “On 2 September 1962, fifty years had passed since the first Romanian fiction film reached the screen.” The statement is not entirely accurate. It would have been more correct to say either “the first Romanian feature-length fiction film” or “the first Romanian fiction film to have survived to this day.” For in 1911—a year before Independența României (Romania’s Independence), on which Grigore Brezeanu and Aristide Demetriade, backed financially by Leon Popescu, joined forces—the former had made Amor fatal, a short film that has since been lost.

The next sentence in the film’s preamble reveals, alongside the anniversary motive, a political one as well: “This film is dedicated to those pioneers of cinema—directors, actors, and cinematographers—who, between 1912 and 1944, confronted the indifference of the bourgeois regime with the fire of their passion and laid a cornerstone of national cinema.” The readiest option for this heavily ideologized tribute was the compilation film, built from sequences out of the productions of those pioneers.

This non-fiction genre—defined by Marcel Martin as “any creative work based on the combination of images that pre-exist separately and were not filmed for this purpose”—was not unknown in Romania. Important titles, such as Prăbușirea dinastiei Romanovilor (The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, Esfir Shub, 1927), had been shown here too. Even earlier, the cameramen of the Romanian Army Film Service had made compilation documentaries about our country’s part in the operations of the First World War, such as Războiul pentru întregirea neamului / Războiul nostru (The War for National Unification / Our War, 1920). But the decisive influence on the choice of the Lanterna cu amintiri format was probably exerted by the North American filmmaker Robert Youngson’s films about classic Hollywood—The Golden Age of Comedy (1958), When Comedy Was King (1960), and Days of Thrills and Laughter (1961)—which also enjoyed success in the Romanian cinemas of the day. Jean Georgescu adapted this model to the local socio-political context, becoming (as director, screenwriter, and—together with Titus Mesaroș, a documentarist at the start of his career—author of the commentary) the maker of the first anthology film on the history of Romanian cinema.

“I conceived Lantern as a remembrance of the old Romanian films, made up to 1944, using the reels preserved at the National Archive,” the filmmaker declared in the newly founded magazine Cinema. His chief collaborator on the part of the National Film Archive (founded in 1957) was Dumitru Fernoagă, who would later become director of the ANF.

Lanterna cu amintiri opens with sequences from Răsună valea (The Valley Resounds, Paul Călinescu, 1950), Jean Georgescu justifying his choice, in the same article, by the fact that “we all remember this first feature film made in the years of people’s rule.” In fact, the first feature film produced after the change of regime in 1947 symbolically marks the debut of the “new era” of national cinema—an era haloed with impressive international trophies (the commentary evokes, among others, the Short Film Palme d’Or won by Ion Popescu Gopo with the animation Scurtă istorie / A Short History at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, and the Crystal Globe won by Liviu Ciulei with his second feature, Valurile Dunării / The Danube Waves, at the 1960 Karlovy Vary Film Festival) and benefiting from the modern studios built at Buftea. From this glorious present, the filmmakers look back toward the—far less glorious—dawn of Romanian cinema and the precarious conditions in which the pioneers of the native film were compelled to work, driven by passion alone.

In a sequence from Răsună valea chosen by Jean Georgescu, we recognize Radu Beligan in the role of “Niky the brigade worker” (Goguleanu, by name), the son of a Bucharest banker who has gone off to cut through the mountains at Bumbești-Livezeni but is more interested in flirting with the dashing young women volunteers he meets there. From this caricatural role written by Mircea Ștefănescu, we move swiftly to Radu Beligan as the narrator of Lanterna cu amintiri. And the historical excursion through the films of the “old era” closes with the same Radu Beligan, this time as Rică Venturiano (the finest role in his entire filmography), in Jean Georgescu’s O noapte furtunoasă (who—not by chance—would return, after Lanterna cu amintiri, to the Caragialean universe with Mofturi 1900, in 1965).

Here, the director and the actor are compelled—like any man at the mercy of his times, as the chronicler had it—to comment on their earlier creations (in Jean Georgescu’s case, not only the films he directed but also those in which he acted, such as Ion Timuș’s Maiorul Mura / Major Mura, or Marin Iorda’s Așa e viața / That’s Life) with a feigned ironic detachment; and in this attempt to put distance between themselves and the “sins of their youth” lies, I believe, the chief asset of Lanterna cu amintiri, seen some six decades on.

Otherwise, as Olteea Vasilescu notes—author, in 1987, of the filmmaker’s first monograph (titled, precisely, Lanterna cu amintiri, with the subtitle Jean Georgescu și filmele sale / Jean Georgescu and His Films)—the director “’writes’ on film, with ‘intuition and sensitivity’, an original auteur’s story: in his vision, Lanterna cu amintiri is composed as a suite of landmark moments from the screen of yesteryear, as a compendium of his most enduring sequences.” An undertaking undoubtedly useful to anyone interested in the history of Romanian cinema (or in the legendary actors of the native theatre, the faces of many of whom are preserved on film), Lanterna cu amintiri remains a pleasure to watch, despite the political accents of its commentary.

Premiere of the week: Lantern of Memories by Jean Georgescu, Tuesday, June 23, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

Cinepub is the one and only, legally operating and free of charge, AVoD platform, dedicated to the Romanian cinema: independent, contemporary, or classic. Our comittment to remain “free” means hundreds of monthly hours of volunteer work of a (very) small team of passionate individuals.

Your donation can help us cover some of the costs of securing some distribution rights, covering the basic costs or just keeping the platform updated; in a nutshell, to survive! If you like what we do, if you read what we write, if you watch the films we show, consider supporting us. We need your help. Thank you!

by Bogdan Jitea

Just like the original Soviet model, the new postwar film industries in the Eastern European states that came under Moscow’s control operated by constantly keeping an eye on the “Iron Curtain,” from which they adopted—and inevitably adapted to the ideological context—various Western trends and commercial formulas. This is also the case with the milicer subgenre—as C.T. Popescu and Ion Indolean independently termed them, drawing from the much better-known Western policier films—films that highlight the work of Militia officers in successfully combating crime in the socialist state.1 The fundamental distinction between the milicer films of Ceaușescu-era cinema and the detective films of contemporary Western European cinema, particularly Italian and French, lies in the presentation of crime as a marginal issue, by no means a structural one within socialist society. When it does not originate directly from outside the country, crime appears rather as a faded remnant of the old regime. In an interview with American historian Michael Stoil in May 1975 in Bucharest, film scholar Henri Dona deciphers the political message of these productions, which aim to present socialist realities as free from the everyday criminality of capitalist societies: “The kind of films we receive from the West that depict the daily lives of the police and criminals is not possible in Romania. We do not show serious crimes in our films, except within their political context.”2

While the genre was largely avoided in the early years of the Ceaușescu regime, the situation changed in the early 1970s, when the Ministry of Internal Affairs became directly involved in film production, offering advice on genre films or even commissioning their production. The main purpose of this collaboration with the film industry was to rehabilitate the institutional image tarnished by the revelations at the April 1968 plenary session of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), during which the Ministry of Internal Affairs was criticized for the excesses of political repression under the Gheorghiu-Dej regime. A report from a Securitate file regarding the Ministry of Internal Affairs’s propaganda activities among the population notes that in 1974 alone, specialized support was provided for the production of the feature films The Trap and The Strange Agent—both inspired by the activities of the Securitate—as well as for certain sequences in the films A Police Inspector Calls and The Return of Magellan, six short films, and 17 newsreel segments, “covering aspects related to the protection of state secrets and the fight against manifestations of social parasitism.”3

Four years later, also with the support of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Cyanide... and the Raindrop was produced, directed by Manole Marcus. According to documents in the production file, the film’s screenplay, co-written by the director and Virgil Mogoș, had been previously reviewed and approved by the General Inspectorate of the Militia and the press and propaganda editorial service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Subsequently, the film crew was accompanied at every step by a Militia officer, Lieutenant Colonel Popa Isaia, who served as the film’s advisor. Although the script posed no ideological problems whatsoever, the “competent officials within the General Inspectorate of the Militia” who read it made a series of observations, requesting several changes from the authors. The main concern centered on references to informers. For this reason, the Interior Ministry’s propagandists demanded the removal of the mention of the “informer’s note” given by the accountant character and the line “I’m no snitch” that the gangster Gigi Berlogea (played by Ștefan Bănică) uttered at one point.4

The shooting script also passed through the film industry’s governing and approval bodies, which emphasized the film’s educational nature and the non-specificity of the situations depicted for socialist Romania. The Screenplay Review Committee of the Filmmakers’ Association and the governing board of Film Studio Three assessed that “the screenplay constitutes a debate on ethics, advocates for the purity of our society, draws attention to the degrading consequences of living in a morally polluted environment, emphasizing that serious deviations from ethics are an exception, but that this exception cannot fail to concern our society in its effort toward perfection.” The comments made regarding the literary script aim to tone down the criminal aspects of the negative characters and emphasize the political commitment of the positive characters. Thus, the two dancers in the chief accountant’s entourage were not to be portrayed as prostitutes, and the Militia officers had to make direct reference to the proposed legislation that the Political Executive Committee had announced regarding re-education through labour.

As is evident from viewing the film, which premiered on September 20, 1978, Manole Marcus did not fully adhere to these instructions and attempted as politically neutral an execution as possible. Only the workplace ethics codes bearing the PCR logo, hanging on the walls of the Militia offices, betray the socialist world in which the characters move. Otherwise, nothing bears the mark of Ceaușescu-era reality—neither the nightclubs with Western music, nor the state institutions that present themselves impeccably and are equipped with modern technology, nor the interiors of the protagonists’ appartments, where the set design avoided the standard-issue furniture found in most Romanian homes. The result is a crime film with a classic whodunnit plot that opens with the image of a corpse being investigated by a Militia team. Gradually, a network of corruption within a construction trust is revealed through a series of flashbacks that stem from the testimonies of individuals questioned by the lead investigator, played in a sober and calculated style by Victor Rebengiuc, elegantly dressed and almost always seen with a lit cigarette. The head of the network is chief accountant Robert Rădulescu, “Bobi” (Iurie Darie), who exploits the personal negligence of his indecisive subordinate Gheorghiu (Aurel Giurumia)—who had lost a significant sum of money—to lure him into an embezzlement scheme run through fictitious time sheets and payroll records. The propaganda subtext is revealed by placing the criminal element within a strictly defined social class. Office clerks, a category viewed with suspicion by the communists as harbouring petty-bourgeois vices, serve as the classic scapegoat onto which the shortcomings of socialist society can be charged. It is from their ranks, and not from the working class fetishised by communism, that most criminals are recruited. The authorities’ exhortation, conveyed through this genre of crime films as well, is for citizens to exercise heightened vigilance toward individuals like Bobi, who camouflage their criminal intentions behind the affability of the man-about-town. The ties that these social elements, on the fringes of communist norms, maintain with the outside world contribute in turn to the distrust of law enforcement. Gigi Berlogea, a high-school friend of Bobi’s, is a black-marketeer fresh out of prison for offences involving the possession of Western currency and trafficking in foreign medicines. A parasitic bond develops between him and Bobi, justified by their shared criminal past. He cadges money off the accountant, helps himself to his apartment at will, and physically dominates him, intimidating him and even slapping him in front of the two dancers, whose occupation as escorts Manole Marcus makes no secret of.

With the exception of these concessions to the ideological factor, Cyanide... and the Raindrop is ultimately a respectable crime film, conscientiously hitting the genre’s main tropes: the analytical investigator, the chameleon-like nature of the suspects, the false leads, the seemingly trivial elements that later become significant, and the climactic final revelation of the criminal’s identity and the motive for the crime. What makes it representative of Ceaușescu-era cinema is the way in which all these elements, borrowed from the Western commercial formula, are distilled into the mould of a run-of-the-mill milicer.

Premiere of the week: Cyanide... and the Raindrop by Manole Marcus, Thursday, June 18, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

Cinepub is the one and only, legally operating and free of charge, AVoD platform, dedicated to the Romanian cinema: independent, contemporary, or classic. Our comittment to remain “free” means hundreds of monthly hours of volunteer work of a (very) small team of passionate individuals.

Your donation can help us cover some of the costs of securing some distribution rights, covering the basic costs or just keeping the platform updated; in a nutshell, to survive! If you like what we do, if you read what we write, if you watch the films we show, consider supporting us. We need your help. Thank you!

In The McDonaldization of Society (1993), George Ritzer sketches an important paradox of consumer society: the more organized it becomes — the more ”ergonomic,” geared toward easing production and consumption in the service of profit — the less efficient it grows. The more systemic, computerized and managed the production and selling machinery of fast-food, the longer the queues and the waiting times; the more procedurally organized the ceremonies — weddings, funerals, even ”in bulk” — the more they devour time and material resources. To put it plainly and in Romanian: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Something of the sort happened with the ”modernization” of cinepub.ro: out of the desire to streamline the editorial process, to find that ideal man-machine symbiosis — Chaplin in Modern Times — the introduction of AI’s triumphs in translation, copy-editing and layout produced the opposite result. A disaster, I might say, because it struck recently at a little-known film that happened to come with a superb curatorial text signed by Andrei Gorzo. Well, it was precisely Gorzo who got lost on the road to The House Between the Hills: significant passages of his article were truncated by the merciless robots, the criminal job finished off by editorial inattention. A perfect intellectual crime, man-machine.

We apologize to our readers and, not least, to our colleague Andrei Gorzo — whom we thank both for a wonderful review and for his patience; the undersigned would be apoplectic with rage had this happened to a text of his own (...) Andrei, forgive us, but, as my grandmother used to say, every cloud has a silver lining: for the first time in its history, cinepub.ro has two cineletters on the same film, within 48 hours. Happy reading: The House Between the Hills, on a second appreciation — complete, this time round!

(Lucian Georgescu, cinepub.ro)

by Andrei Gorzo

A television production directed by Alexandru Tatos, later released in theaters, “The House Between the Fields” (1979) is a socialist-realist film, but a neo-one, crafted not according to the formula of the 1950s, but according to one updated for the 1970s, in which there was free rein for measured satire of festive kitsch and, above all, for criticizing the presidents of the CAPs (Agricultural Production Cooperatives). In her review of the film (which, as we shall see, she ultimately liked), Ecaterina Oproiu expressed annoyance at the script’s current clichés: yet another passionate young agronomist, yet another backward CAP president. (The screenplay was written by Corneliu Leu, who at the time headed Film Studio 4, and was adapted from his novel, “The Price of Love, Faith, and Hate”, published a year earlier.) The figure of the C.A.P. president, in particular, annoyed Oproiu, sparking her wit. Her review is still a pleasure to read today: “Almost without exception, the C.A.P. presidents invented by screenwriters [in recent Romanian films] have the air of decrepit shacks. Some are gloomy, others are sarcastic, some are massive, others are gaunt. Almost without exception, they all seem to have a biological inability to understand not only the collective good, but also their own personal good. If the darkness beneath their foreheads could serve as an energy source, dozens of villages could be electrified by the stupidity of conflicts like this one: the mayor has cement, but he doesn’t want to invest it in the levee. He wants to invest it — where? — in the town hall’s fence.”

Played by Amza Pellea, the president in this film is one of those burly, not scrawny, jolly, not gloomy types. His name is Axente. Another character describes him as a man “of the people”, and indeed, he is a natural leader, a Gabin. A “man of the people” also means a “man of life” — rosy-cheeked, burly, and comfortable in his 50-plus years — a 50-plus man in his prime with a gray mustache. (In fact, Pellea was 48 when he played the role.) Axente is always on the campaign trail. He has a “How’s the little one doing?” ready for every villager who crosses his path. Passing by a group of children rehearsing a dance for a festival, he steps in among them and shows them how it’s done. Amza Pellea’s belly plays a starring role in this film, and his demagogic imitation of hearty laughter is a thing of beauty. All in all, what he offers here is a critique of the charisma he so effortlessly displayed during the same period in the role of Nea Mărin.

The agronomist, whose efforts to build an irrigation system are sabotaged by Axente, is played by Mircea Daneliuc, who is a presence of equal stature. Daneliuc, who would go on to become the most compelling Romanian director of the 1980s, was not primarily an actor, but he was a star, with all that entails: intensity, sex appeal, a distinctive persona. At 35–36 years old, his persona is already fully formed: he is already the uncomfortable Daneliuc, prickly and harsh in his fierce determination. He grumbles about the hunting trips organized for the “comrades from the county” and is naturally arrogant toward all the activists — even the humane one (Corado Negreanu), who in principle could be on his side in the conflict with Axente. He is simply a different breed from them and cannot help but bristle when he sees them. (The decent activist still fulfills his role as deus ex machina, saving him in the film’s final act.) He is a master of the sidelong glance, delivered like a gunshot. He even cracks sunflower seeds between his teeth with intensity, as if he were training to steal Piersic’s role as Mărgelatu.

Did I mention sex appeal? OK, enter the technician (Tora Vasilescu), who is engaged to the accountant at the agricultural production cooperative (Mircea Diaconu), whom the agronomist has been hitting on ever since she walked onto the stage. He’s been hitting on her ever since their eyes met; he’s been hitting on her even when they’re sitting at different tables, inviting her through pantomime to take a ride on his motorcycle. She climbs onto the motorcycle, wearing a red headscarf that matches his helmet, and boom — what’s between them could electrify those villages Ecaterina Oproiu used to talk about. Not caring about the village gossip, the technician moves into the engineer’s den, where, as we catch a glimpse at one point, he is relaxing while reading “The Comedians” by Graham Greene (who, coincidentally or not, writes well about rough men who covet their neighbor’s wife). The film squeezes a bit of comedy out of the coquettish technician’s efforts to tame the wild engineer (she immediately slams a knickknack onto the shelf and plastic roses onto the table), but her character is the one who is quickly sidelined by the script — reduced to the role of a loyal partner who, once her husband is maliciously denounced, spends the rest of the film smoking nervously while he is investigated for damages amounting to nearly 200,000 lei. In fact, we hadn’t even seen her doing her job as a technician up to that point; she wasn’t presented to us as passionate about what she does, the way he is. Reducing Tora Vasilescu to a supporting role for the man leaves room only for brief glimpses of her fiery temperament. The film would have benefited from more moments where she and Daneliuc snap at each other, as they do when she scalds him while washing his hair. As things stand, the engineer is the one who snaps more at the technician (and her plastic flowers), which is surely explained by the fact that he’s on edge from the investigation, though gender relations in their household didn’t seem very modern even before, and brusqueness seems to be in his nature. Even under these circumstances, Vasilescu is Daneliuc’s equal in their angry exchanges of glances, and the dynamic between them in “The House Between the Fields” serves as an intriguing prelude to their legendary collaboration in “Microphone Testing” (1980), where Daneliuc would serve as both screenwriter and director.

Valeriu Drăgușanu wrote at the time that, although “The House Between the Fields” is credited to Alexandru Tatos, the film’s style is Daneliuc’s. He meant to say that the village in Bărăgan where the action takes place appears less staged than most of the other villages in Romanian films of the era. The extras in the fairground sequence are clearly local residents: we see people dressed in clothes that look like their everyday attire, we see Roma people as well, we meet their gaze (since they keep looking into the camera), and we sense their poverty. Drăgușanu was exaggerating: Tatos’s ambition to document rural life without staging it or embellishing it remains timid, focusing on the edges of the frame. Overall, he follows the lines of the screenplay, coloring within the lines, without overstepping. But despite his timidity, Tatos’s intention to challenge the artificiality of the cinematic genre he serves is clear: it comes through most clearly in the sequence where Daneliuc catches a TV commercial for a new Romanian film “about work and love, moving, captivating, tender”, and, in a fit of contempt, throws food at the screen. If Daneliuc and Vasilescu are warming up here for “Microphone Testing”, Tatos is doing the same for “Sequences” (a 1982 film that deserves to be discussed as the one that, of all Romanian films made between 1948 and 1989 that challenge official communist myths and the standard ways of illustrating them, goes the furthest).

In her review of “The House Between the Fields”, Ecaterina Oproiu begins, as we have seen, by mocking the plot, but ends up relishing the details that overwhelm her. Praising Dorina Sortan’s sets and Irina Katz’s costumes, Oproiu notes, with a shudder of horror, “the paintings of kittens and pheasants, and the porcelain ballerina, and the vase of plastic roses, and that castle with its pressed-cardboard battlements, and the little carriage with its photo-souvenir stands, [and] Diaconu’s overalls and cap, [and] the flamboyant technician’s smock.” The shudder comes from recognizing on screen the kitsch element in Romanian village life, which Nina Cassian called (also in an admiring note about “The House Between the Fields”, published at the time), “kitsch in interior decoration as well as that in the inner lives of certain characters.” This shock of revelation, experienced by Oproiu and Cassian in front of the screen, is interesting for what it reveals both about Ceaușescu’s official culture (how suffocating it had already become by the late ’70s) and about their own sensibilities (with an element of classism, of metropolitan superiority).

Otherwise, the community — represented by a few one-dimensional characters — a physical education teacher (Victor Vlase), a war veteran (Mihai Pălădescu), and a sympathetic police officer (Dorel Vișan) — is idealized in accordance with the conventions of the genre. No matter how much their leader, Axente, tries to manipulate them, the villagers show solidarity with the nonconformist and persecuted lovers, because they clearly see their professional and human qualities. (The women of the village, led by Axente’s own wife, are the first to show solidarity with the stigmatized technician.) Because he denies these obvious facts, the C.A.P. chairman, despite all his charisma, loses the community’s trust. Since the film is a gentle, socialist-realist fairy tale, that is the full extent of the chairman’s punishment. The persecuted engineer — sent to a rehabilitation camp somewhere “in the sands” — has too constructive a mindset to ask for more. For that is how these prickly little saints of socialist construction are: busy sanctifying wastelands with their skill and integrity, they have no time for revenge.

The main merit of “The House Between the Fields” is that its central archetypes are brought to life to a satisfying degree. In other words, it’s a film driven by its actors. Or, rather, it’s a film driven by star power. Even though it’s an ensemble cast, what matters is that Vasilescu, Daneliuc, and Pellea are such magnetic figures. When, in the engineer’s absence (detained for questioning), the C.A.P. president visits the technician to evict her from the house (it is the C.A.P.’s house, where the new agronomist is to move in), Pellea’s body radiates menace as he fills the space, especially when, continuing to speak suggestively to Vasilescu, he sits on the bed she shares with Daneliuc and tests the springs with his buttocks. And, in the role of the accountant left without a fiancée, Mircea Diaconu exudes a malicious lechery, provoked by the honest sexual chemistry of the Daneliuc-Vasilescu couple. Pellea and Diaconu are a well-matched pair of negative characters: walking side by side down the alley, they are like two vicious dogs, one big and one small — Diaconu also has a deceptively covetous gaze, as well as a sneer with a corner of his upper lip raised, revealing some fangs. Diaconu’s portrayal here is in the same vein as those in “Sequences” and “Why Are the Bells Ringing, Mitică?” – portraits of servile little men, with stagnant desires and something twisted within them. In “The House Between the Fields”, his craftsmanship is perhaps too obvious — he seems to have thought of this country accountant as a Shakespearean schemer — but the impression is memorable.

Premiere of the week: The House Between the Fields by Alexandru Tatos, Thursday, June 11, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

Cinepub is the one and only, legally operating and free of charge, AVoD platform, dedicated to the Romanian cinema: independent, contemporary, or classic. Our comittment to remain “free” means hundreds of monthly hours of volunteer work of a (very) small team of passionate individuals.

Your donation can help us cover some of the costs of securing some distribution rights, covering the basic costs or just keeping the platform updated; in a nutshell, to survive! If you like what we do, if you read what we write, if you watch the films we show, consider supporting us. We need your help. Thank you!

by Mihai Fulger

He made his directorial debut alongside his colleague Iulian Mihu with a short film adapting a story by Chekhov, “To the Apples” (a graduation film from the Institute, 1955), and a feature film, also an adaptation, but after three short stories by Alexandru Sahia (“Life Does Not Forgive”, released in 1959—after many “battles” with the censors — one of the most valuable Romanian films of the “haunting decade” of the 1950s), Manole Marcus promised to become a bold filmmaker, both aesthetically and ethically.

With few exceptions (such as the dreamlike “The Canary and the Blizzard” — 1970, inspired by a short story by Ioan Grigorescu, or “Orgolii” [Pride] — 1982, a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Augustin Buzura), his rather extensive filmography did not live up to those expectations. The boldness of a much-discussed production (“Power and Truth”, 1972) was sanctioned — if not actively encouraged — by the leadership; his films featuring police commissioners (“The Conspiracy” and “Far from Tipperary,” both from 1973, and “The Trap”, from 1974) are more politicized — and, by extension, more tedious for the general public — than those of Sergiu Nicolaescu, and his most popular works (“The Actor and the Savages” and “Operation The ‘Monster’”, released in 1975 and 1976, respectively) owe their enduring success largely to the skillfully crafted screenplays by Titus Popovici and the comic moments provided by the “sacred monsters” Toma Caragiu, Octavian Cotescu, and Marin Moraru.

As even the few titles listed here demonstrate, Manole Marcus did not confine himself to a single film genre; throughout his career, he explored various areas and directions, approaching each with dedication and professionalism (as attested by those who worked with him).

We can find elements that foreshadow “Like in the Movies” (1984) in three other films by the director. The first is actually the very first feature film directed solely by Manole Marcus (based on a screenplay by Simion Macovei): the ideologically conformist musical comedy “I Don’t Want to Get Married” (1961), about the mix-ups, intrigues, and romances at a textile factory with an artistic troupe. The second is the only contemporary crime film directed by the filmmaker (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Virgil Mogoș): “Cyanide and the Rain Drop” (1978), a notable production of the era’s specific spolicier (the genre, a hybrid between crime film and spy film, would reach its full potential the following year with “A Man in Raincoat”, the film adaptation by Haralamb Zincă of the cinematographer-turned-director Nicolae Mărgineanu). Finally, “Non-stop” (1982), written and directed by Manole Marcus, is an anthology film dedicated to the evolution of the Romanian musical comedy over the preceding three decades, likely inspired by Haralambie Boroș’s “The Buftea Express,” which had demonstrated, three years earlier, that it was possible to make a mainstream feature film at minimal cost using archival footage.

Narratively, “Like in the Movies”, with a screenplay by Liviu Timbus, is based on the trope of unlikely partners from completely different backgrounds and/or with vastly different personalities, one of whom is usually far less cooperative and accommodating than the other. This trope is effectively used in all kinds of Hollywood productions, such as the “48 Hrs.” and “Lethal Weapon” series. In Romanian cinema, Marian Crișan used it in “Morgen” (2010), “Berliner” (2020), and “Warboy” (2023).

In Liviu Timbus and Manole Marcus’s film, the main character is Arcadie Popescu (played by Alexandru Arșinel), a screenwriter suffering from a lack of inspiration, much like the director played by Dem Rădulescu in “The Buftea Express”. Right from the opening sequence, in which Arcadie breaks the “fourth wall,” looking directly into the camera lens, introducing himself and explaining his situation (he is working on a screenplay with “everything — love, tears, beautiful women, and music, and humor,” requested by the film studio bosses for a debut director), it is clear to viewers that they are about to see a film that is both self-reflective and parodic. Essentially, “Like in the Movies” is among those films of the period that strove to convince their audience that in socialist Romania there was a film industry operating on the laws of supply and demand, and by no means one tightly controlled by the ruling authorities.

The second main character is Adam (Ion Caramitru), a lab technician who is a workaholic and incorruptible. A graduate of two universities with outstanding grades, he chose scientific research over the more lucrative (i.e., more prone to bribery) practice of medicine, especially in his specialty (obstetrics and gynecology). Thus, he drives his wife, Sidonia (Catrinel Dumitrescu), to despair, as she is forced to spend most of her free time alone at home, while her husband works overtime at the Institute and wastes his money on taxis. The contrast between the two protagonists is also reflected in their names: Arcadie Popescu seems like a Caragialean character, while Adam (always without a first name) is the quintessential “new man,” devoted body and soul to the cause (and, obviously, resistant — at least initially — to any obstacle in the way of it, such as a bumbling screenwriter who’s run out of ideas). Arcadie is mocked, Adam idealized.

However, the two form a “collective protagonist” (plural protagonist, in Robert McKee’s terminology), since they share the same goal, and the success of one could lead to that of the other (or so the latter believes). Specifically, the “epoch-making” discovery Adam is pursuing — and for which he neglects his family obligations, spending his evenings asleep in the lab — is seen by Arcadie as a sine qua non condition for the success of his plan. The conflict the writer attempts to weave around the researcher’s discovery (involving two “rival multinational conglomerates” that recruit people right from the Institute in an attempt to get their hands on the revolutionary formula) is reminiscent of the plots of Romanian spoliciers from the 1950s and 1960s, in which “foreign agencies” (as Nicolae Ceaușescu would later call them) and “imperialist forces”, allied with people from the “old regime”, “rotten capitalists”, or at least individuals with reactionary beliefs, stop at nothing to appropriate the achievements of the perpetual scientific-technological revolution. As expected, Arcadie becomes much more likable to viewers than the paragon of integrity — and of maladjustment — Adam, even though the scientist is humanized somewhat by his relationship with Sidonia (who, incidentally, brings both men back down to earth).

After all, the screenwriter, who claims to have previously written five musical comedies “and two films”, utters plenty of memorable quips, such as “A film without femme fatales and adventure is like a sausage without mustard” or “We need a truth that’s less true, but one that seems true — that’s the movie” (we are two years after Alexandru Tatos, the director playing himself, sought a truth above humanity in the masterpiece “Sequences”), attributing some of the aphorisms to a wife absent from the screen or to the “deceased” (none other than Shakespeare). Meanwhile, when he isn’t resorting to the off-putting jargon of science, Adam invokes a cliché of Voltairean descent, “The better is the enemy of the good”, to justify his existential and ethical choices.

As for Manole Marcus, one of his interesting choices is to insert sequences from the “film-within-the-film-about-the-film”, thereby parodying formulaic Hollywood crime and spy films. More precisely, these are sequences that could have been part of the debut feature film based on Arcadie’s new screenplay, had it ever been made. In other words, this would have been possible if a healthy socialist cinema had accepted such productions that were detached from local realities. We can laugh and joke all we want at the expense of the decadent West, with its local imitators, but at the end of the day, we stay indoors, where it’s warm and cozy, because the party-state makes sure to keep us under control, but also protected…

Premiere of the week: Like in the Movies by Manole Marcus, Thursday, June 4, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

Cinepub is the one and only, legally operating and free of charge, AVoD platform, dedicated to the Romanian cinema: independent, contemporary, or classic. Our comittment to remain “free” means hundreds of monthly hours of volunteer work of a (very) small team of passionate individuals.

Your donation can help us cover some of the costs of securing some distribution rights, covering the basic costs or just keeping the platform updated; in a nutshell, to survive! If you like what we do, if you read what we write, if you watch the films we show, consider supporting us. We need your help. Thank you!

by Augustin Cupșa

Although only 17 years have passed since its release, this film requires some context for younger viewers. After the political upheavals of 1989, Romania, like all the countries of the Eastern Bloc, took a shortcut, crossing borders and fields toward the residential neighborhoods of the West. Stages of social development were skipped, democratic values and standards were reclaimed, and private initiative reemerged. The 1990s were wild, like a torrential downpour that broke the dams and scattered the people, laying the groundwork for a diaspora of several million Romanians—most of them overqualified, resourceful, and sufficiently terrified by the country’s politics to seize the window of opportunity before it closed again. By comparison, the 2000s seemed devoid of substance.

Romanian cinema reached its peak with the New Wave, which gained recognition at international film festivals. Instead, the film industry had to revolve around television networks, which dictated the rules of the game. The satellite dishes of the 1990s disappeared from rooftops, and private, national, local, neighborhood, or apartment-block channels — such as OTV — entered homes via cable. Following the artificial reporting of the years of wooden language, journalism underwent a malignant reversal: it was not reality that produced emotion, but rather the opposite — reality was dramatized according to the impressions of program directors. The 5:00 p.m. news turned daily life into a pocket-sized soap opera filled with crimes, betrayals, sex, and drugs. There was a sort of attempt to boost ratings during the break between two Brazilian soap operas. With these thoughts in mind, commercial film production tentatively turned toward an audience that resembled an alien to whom it had to explain, in sign language, what life was like in this corner of the world. This is how Romanian soap operas emerged, as well as the film intended to be a blockbuster — all cut from roughly the same cloth, largely featuring the same producers, actors, directors, and screenwriters.

Many established directors, now in the prime of their creative careers, found themselves facing this challenge. Stere Gulea first made a name for himself with “The Green Grass of Carpathians” (1977), based on a screenplay co-written with novelist Sorin Titel, after serving as assistant director on “Beyond the Sandcliffs”, Radu Gabrea’s adaptation of Nicolae Breban’s novel. This was followed by The Carpathian Castle (1981) and Bear’s Eyes (1983). Stere Gulea’s penchant for expansive literature stems from his early training as a philologist at the Faculty of Letters. After some preparatory work and exercises in cinematic technique, the rising director took on the film adaptation of “The Moromete Family”, Marin Preda’s novel, the cornerstone of Romanian literature in the second half of the 20th century. It was a well-deserved success, thanks to which Ilie Moromete, Maria, Nilă, Paraschiv, Achim, Niculae, Bălosu, and Stan Țugurlan took on faces in the collective imagination, and their lines became part of everyone’s vocabulary.

Then, just as in Preda’s novel, the world is turned upside down once again, and as if from a pit of strangers, new figures emerge and make their way to the forefront. After the revolution came the cult documentary “University Square – Romania” (1991, co-directed with Vivi Drăgan Vasile and Sorin Ilieșu), followed by two excellent feature films, “The Fox Hunter” (1993) and “State of Affairs” (1995), and a collaboration on the TV series “Hacker”. After dabbling in both politics and the management of TVR, Stere Gulea returned to feature films with “Weekend with my Mother”, produced toward the end of the decade, based on a screenplay by Vera Ion, an adaptation of her novel.

Just as in 2000s literature, film relied on the idea of delivering raw reality on the spot, without reflection or authorial processing (unlike in the case of Marin Preda’s “The Moromete Family”, where real events became literature more than 20 years after they took place, or in the work of other long-standing novelists) . The real-time dramatization of everyday life was the driving force behind the news, talk shows, evening programs, “Surprize, Surprize” (Surprises, Surprises), and even sports competitions or the weather segment. In the literature of the 2000s, the academic validation of this phenomenon came to be known as “authenticism”.

The film’s theme is all too familiar to us — Romanians leave to find work, abandon their children, and families fall apart. The subject is so common that it becomes the subject of a book written by one of the film’s supporting characters, who psychologically documents the situation that affects him personally. This is Felix (Florin Zamfirescu), the father of the teenage heroine — Cristina (Adela Popescu) — who lives in a foster family after her parents separated. It seems that Luiza (Medeea Marinescu) left for Spain when the child was three and a half years old, and the father, who became a university professor — even a vice-rector — shirked his paternal duties, even though he remained in Bucharest. In fact, the man, with his perpetually distracted air, suffers from a kind of academic schizoid disorder; he constantly loses touch with reality, preoccupied as he is with his career and academic power. He has a peculiar smile and chatters enthusiastically about psychological articles and books when he should be confronting the drama of his daughter, who has become addicted to heroin. He is so bizarre that when he meets the teenager for coffee, alongside Luiza, after many years, instead of taking the girl’s hand, he slips his own glossy-covered book between her fingers — most likely self-published by some obscure press. And when the girl pours all the venom of her abandonment in his face, he laughs awkwardly.

Instead, the mother is doing her utmost to get the girl back on the right track, even though she herself finds herself in a somewhat questionable offside position. In fact, pretty much all the characters have an uncertain outline and move with cautious anticipation, except when they smoke and stick their dicks in (a slang excess specific to 2000s-style authenticity). For example, Luiza, who left her daughter at three and a half years old in the care of her sister, Elena (Ecaterina Nazare), and Sandu (Ion Sapdaru), reappears 16 years later as if from another planet, deprived of means of communication or transportation, and doesn’t know what her daughter looks like, even though she claims she kept in constant contact with her and sent money home.

Furthermore, in addition to her financial success, it seems the woman has also undergone a structural transformation—much like Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”, she has become exceedingly refined, so that her return to her former environment, despite her best efforts, creates a constant aesthetic contrast. Finally, of all the characters, Luiza seems the most committed to her role, thanks to the effort of Medeea Marinescu, who tries to fill the gap between the abbreviated lines detached from natural emotions — such as worry, fear, guilt, or love — and anything the viewer might label as pathos (the concept opposed to 2000-style authenticity). In short, according to the paradigm, narrative events must be sensational, but the protagonists’ involvement must remain detached, chill, or no panic, man. The result, however, feels more like a brightly painted roller coaster at an amusement park on the outskirts of Bucharest; the viewer feels confused and short-changed.

Once in town, Luiza, with her newly acquired distinction, finds herself caught up in a whirlwind of terrifying situations. Her brother-in-law Sandu is a sinister brute whom she suspects of having abused her daughter, while her sister Elena has suffered a stroke and is out of touch with reality, and their little girl is no more than 8 years old and speaks with difficulty under pressure, so, through this device, the author finds himself spared from narrative details and logic. The situation looks dire in a city morally and financially ruined — Cristina and “Glonț” (Tudor Aaron Istodor) deal and use injectable drugs, smoke cannabis, and chain-smoke in subway restrooms and rented rooms, while almost all of her friends are “spoiled” girls who drink themselves senseless in clubs and hook up with older men in cars.

In stark contrast stands the traditional Romanian village, with its wooden houses and strings of onions hanging in the porches, the fresh scent of the earth, and the shade of the forest, where Grandfather (Gheorghe Dinică) still leans on his rake and gazes into the distance. The timelessness of the Romanian village embodied by this man is so eternal that he is not surprised when people leave or arrive, not even when his own children, long gone, everything flows by in a rush, he goes about his household chores and returns from hunting with a rabbit caught by the ears and a rifle in the other hand, to feed his family that has sprung up out of nowhere.

In this oasis of patriarchal tranquility, Luiza brings her daughter — after a hastily arranged detox — to Alexandru Obregia Hospital in Bucharest, simply and humorously telling her that “the heroin thing isn’t okay”. Strangely enough, though, the intervention works; mother and daughter finally grow closer, and it seems the story will take a sensitive turn and explore this fragile relationship at length. It doesn’t go that way. The teenager, in turn, has a daughter abandoned at an orphanage after her biological father died in a motorcycle accident, so the two must return to Bucharest. Naturally, Cristina runs into Glonț again, and that’s how she ends up with Johnny (Andi Vasluianu), a major drug dealer to whom the poor guy owes about 10,000 euros, so he’s willing to hand over his girlfriend’s child in exchange.

Well, it seems a bit much, but that’s how it is. There are only about 8 minutes of film left, and the story takes a new turn. Stere Gulea is a director versatile and skilled enough to handle the subject matter, but the narrative has to rely on major gaps and inconsistencies in meaning to move toward the intended resolution. Johnny seems to have entered a lucid mystical delirium after prolonged consumption of bizarre substances and is in contact with Edwards (Răzvan Vasilescu), whom we recognize as Luiza’s seatmate from the beginning of the film, when the plane from Spain was flying over Bucharest and the two were admiring the multicolored lights.

The ending is harsh and shouldn’t be spoiled; it’s one of the many possibilities that narrative improvisation offers, chosen almost at random. However, this might be the advantage of watching the film all the way through — the cascade of surprises that, from a certain point onward, unfold unintentionally and aimlessly.

Premiere of the week: Weekend with my Mother by Stere Gulea, Thursday, May 28, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

Cinepub is the one and only, legally operating and free of charge, AVoD platform, dedicated to the Romanian cinema: independent, contemporary, or classic. Our comittment to remain “free” means hundreds of monthly hours of volunteer work of a (very) small team of passionate individuals.

Your donation can help us cover some of the costs of securing some distribution rights, covering the basic costs or just keeping the platform updated; in a nutshell, to survive! If you like what we do, if you read what we write, if you watch the films we show, consider supporting us. We need your help. Thank you!

by Mihai Fulger

Filmmaker Dan Chișu made a spectacular debut on the big screen. Over the course of three years, three feature-length fiction films written and directed by him premiered: “WebSiteStory” (2010), “The Bear” (2011), and a first highlight of his filmography, “Chasing Rainbows” (2012).

Of these first three feature films, the last is also the most relevant to Romania’s post-socialist transition, during which, among other things, many movie theaters were converted into bingo halls. While the new businessmen were scrambling to pull off a big score that would ensure them a lavish lifestyle, workers and the unemployed dreamed of a bag of money falling into their laps, as a prize in one of the numerous games of chance or “mutual aid” schemes that had spread across the country, promising even the moon.

As the title of his film suggests, Dan Chișu explores this mirage of getting rich overnight, which has claimed victims across several generations, thereby revealing society’s immaturity and vulnerability. The director-screenwriter does this by skillfully alternating between two narrative strands, two seemingly disjointed worlds that ultimately intersect. Each has a well-developed protagonist, alongside whom a supporting character with a similar background — and who implicitly shares their goals — gains significance.

At the center of the story is the warehouse manager, impeccably portrayed by Adrian Titieni, who delivers one of the finest performances of his impressive career. After 20 years of responsibly managing a factory warehouse, the protagonist is laid off because management plans to computerize his work, and he knows nothing about computers. As a result, one of the first steps he takes after being laid off is to enroll in a course to learn basic digital skills (Dragoș Bucur makes a delightful cameo appearance as the instructor).

The difficulties older people face in adapting to new technologies have also been explored, with comedic effect, in other Romanian films, such as the short film “The Yellow Smiley Face” (Constantin Popescu, 2008) or the feature film “Hello... How Are You?” (Alexandru Maftei, 2011). However, Dan Chișu gradually shifts the tone, with the initial humor of the interactions with the computer giving way to drama (just as, in the background, what initially seems like a joke ends up revealing serious situations).

The storekeeper, who lives alone, has Buzilă by his side (Tudor Smoleanu’s authentic performance justifies the director’s confidence in entrusting him with an important role), a neighbor who is a painter. The latter — a simple man who nevertheless tries to maintain his dignity — is the only person who treats the protagonist with respect, and to whom he confides without reservation. When trouble strikes, the storekeeper drags the equally gullible Buzilă down with him.

The second narrative thread focuses on Marius (Ionuț Vișan, in his first leading role in a feature film, is also a perfect choice), nicknamed “the orphan” by his old friends (played by Cătălin Bordea and Mihai Niță, who bring vibrancy to the film’s opening). Young Marius lives with his mother (Oxana Moravec, an actress who is always on top of her game), who insists that he find a job, and he doesn’t know his father (about whom his mother refuses to speak). Marius has reason to believe the man’s name is Tocitu, which is why, when he enters a lottery at a club, he uses that name, without suspecting that he’ll win the grand prize but won’t be able to claim it because his legal name is Bratosin, not Tocitu.

In this secondary storyline, the supporting character is Cosmina (Anca Florescu, a former singer and bandmate of Nicoleta Luciu in the group Laguna, is convincing in her second notable feature film role, following her performance in “Something Good Out Of Life”, Dan Pița’s 2011 film). Cosmina, too, has an unhappy family history: her father does not acknowledge her as his daughter and is interested in becoming her pimp, and her mother, whose apartment is across the street from Marius’s (so he and his friends first see her through a peephole while she’s changing for her job as a promoter), has gone to work in the West (economic migration also appears frequently in Romanian productions, as in those of other post-socialist cinemas).

Cosmina is the one who enters Marius in the lottery, and so it falls to her to tell him that he has won a million euros. Fed up with her low-paying job, which forces her to put up with the rudeness of club patrons, Cosmina sees a chance to escape by convincing Marius to give her a share of his winnings. More practical than the protagonist, when she finds out that he had entered under a different name, Cosmina sets off with him across the country in search of a certain Mr. Tocitu, willing to claim the prize and split the money with the young couple.

Thus, the second narrative thread, which begins as a family drama and romance, transforms into a road movie featuring moments that are both intense — even painful (the scene with the couple played by Coca Bloos and Constantin Ghenescu) — and lighthearted, thanks to situational comedy (the appearance of set designer Mihai Dorobanțu).

Cosmina is pragmatic, but also sensitive. She doesn’t just want to secure her future; she also wants to help Marius find his father. After all, we all love happy endings (and reunited families). Marius, on the other hand, is more interested in finding out who his father is than in collecting his prize, but he doesn’t admit this to Cosmina — with whom he has quickly fallen in love — so as not to lose her. And she, after initially rejecting him, gradually changes her feelings toward him…

These are the film’s four main characters. They are complex characters, plagued by doubts and indecision; characters who do not blindly pursue a single goal, but evolve before the viewers’ eyes. They are authentic characters with whom the audience can easily empathize.

In terms of direction, in addition to his excellent guidance of the actors, Dan Chișu deserves credit for having conceived and portrayed — with the invaluable support of cinematographer Ovidiu Gyarmath and editor Andrei Iancu — the two narrative strands, or rather the two worlds of the characters, in a completely different way. The world of the technophobic elders is filmed in a static, descriptive style, with wider and longer shots, the filmmaker often opting for changes in framing rather than editing cuts. The approach is more theatrical, relying heavily on dialogue and its (subtle) humor. In contrast, the world of the tech-loving youth is filmed and edited much more dynamically (in keeping with the characters’ perpetual restlessness), with a handheld camera swiftly traversing the distances between characters and remaining constantly close to them, even resorting to subjective angles. A more tense treatment, in which atmosphere, spaces, facial expressions, and gestures play a prominent role. Thus, the generational divide corresponds to the gap between two modes of cinematic storytelling, and the film speaks not only of the illusion of wealth but also of the distinct ways in which we relate to existence.

It should also be noted that Dan Chișu, through DaKINO Production, produced the independent film — with the support of Giuliano Doman (Family Film) — and covered a significant portion of the production budget (estimated at a quarter of a million euros) out of his own pocket. When nearly the entire domestic film industry depends on CNC funding, such an independent producer, whose passion for cinema overshadows the pursuit of profit, deserves the utmost respect.

“Chasing Rainbows” was a true test of maturity, passed with flying colors by a largely self-taught filmmaker who has grown from one film to the next, becoming increasingly adept at mastering the language of his art.

Premiere of the week: Chasing Rainbows by Dan Chișu, Tuesday, May 26, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

Cinepub is the one and only, legally operating and free of charge, AVoD platform, dedicated to the Romanian cinema: independent, contemporary, or classic. Our comittment to remain “free” means hundreds of monthly hours of volunteer work of a (very) small team of passionate individuals.

Your donation can help us cover some of the costs of securing some distribution rights, covering the basic costs or just keeping the platform updated; in a nutshell, to survive! If you like what we do, if you read what we write, if you watch the films we show, consider supporting us. We need your help. Thank you!

by Bogdan Movileanu

“Grant Mitigating Circumstances?”, released in December 1984 and directed by Lucian Bratu, has the very interesting distinction of never having circulated on the internet, and practically the generations of people who have watched Romanian films online or via streaming have likely never seen it (though, of course, there were some occasions when it aired on television), so we can consider it a sort of hidden treasure.

Lucian Bratu’s filmography remains compelling and manages to break free from the socialist conventions of that era, venturing into fresh and clever territory (especially in “Angela Goes On” — recently brought to light by Radu Jude, who uses excerpts from the film edited in parallel with the action in his own movie, “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” — and in “A Film with a Charming Girl”, based on a screenplay by Radu Cosașu).

“Grant Mitigating Circumstances?”, starts from a premise that is as two-dimensional as can be (a fatal accident at a factory leads to an investigation to find the culprit, and all the pieces of the puzzle fall exactly into place, even if some of them do so later than anticipated) and from a screenplay featuring and centered on workers and factories, yet it manages to be a personal and human journey through the 1980s. The direction clearly seeks to suggest a depth greater than what exists in the screenplay. The moments of silence, the glances, and the jazz music in the background end up saying more than most of the working-class dialogue and substantially increase the film’s depth, leading us toward a social drama that seems to operate separately from the potentially dull and concrete world of the factory and the courtroom.

Although it may be considered a spoiler, it is still worth noting that the question “why?” arises. Why does the protagonist, Andrei (Gheorghe Dănilă), end up admitting the guilt he had initially concealed and ignore his lawyer, who pleads for leniency? Why and how exactly does the chain of events he proposes make logical sense? More specifically: he says he sees a worker lying at the bottom of a factory shaft, and instead of going to check if he’s okay, he replaces a part in a toxic machine to cover up someone else’s negligence, then goes anyway to see if the worker is okay (and lo and behold? he wasn’t okay anymore).

What exactly prevented the protagonist from checking on the worker’s condition? In a critical moment, it’s hard to believe this would be a credible chain of decisions on the protagonist’s part. It seems very contrived that he acts this way, as well as his subsequent admission of guilt, when he was so close to getting away with it. We aren’t given very clear reasons for the decisions made (Is the moment when he says he couldn’t live a lie enough? Probably not). All of this also implies that Andrei is giving up a life he was about to start with his fiancée. Is there a reverse psychology tactic at play here? By asking for the maximum sentence, is he trying to impress the judges and get the opposite? Has he had enough of the good life? Or does he want to do something no one expects? (Like the characters in “Closer to the Moon”, directed by Nae Caranfil). There were several moments in the film where this “and yet why?” hovers over the events.

Given that the film received the highest score in the Trei Film Studio’s project competition (as noted in the 1984 issue of “Cinema” magazine), a plausible hypothesis is that the aim was to portray workers and socialism in a positive light, as a model of morality, even in extreme situations, but logic is not the strong suit of Andrei’s work. Another hypothesis could be that in difficult times people do unexpected things, but it is hard to determine how far one can take this hypothesis. An official description of the film (taken from the same 1984 issue of the magazine “Cinema”) states that it is an “ethical debate on an industrial theme, where responsibility toward work overlaps with the main character’s tortuous process of conscience.”

To shed some light on the cause-and-effect relationships at play, here are a few fan theories that, while clearly not conceived by the screenwriters (Simion Gall and Radu Gurău), certainly make more sense: 1. No one fully understands workplace safety regulations, and when force majeure events occur, it’s not very clear what to do — so the film is a critique of the overly complicated system of 1980s factories and industrial complexes; 2. Andrei passionately hates socialism in the city, and the only escape he sees is to stay in prison as long as possible; 3. We are dealing with a non-omniscient narrator and a meta-narrative, in which the viewer chooses what is real and what is not and also delivers the final verdict (which we do not learn from the film anyway); 4. The factory is the inverted court, and everyone’s personal lives are a form of purgatory; 5. The factory’s toxic gases have actually clouded everyone’s judgment in the city, and the ending is the culmination of this transformation; Andrei’s confession is a direct result of these gases. Basically, any viewer can come up with speculative explanations that make more sense than the story’s main premise.

Although the film’s screenplay is problematic for the reasons already mentioned, Lucian Bratu’s direction and Liviu Pojoni’s cinematography save the film. Yes, it’s about factories and workers, but in fact only the opening and the flashbacks are connected to this world, sometimes even taking on a sci-fi landscape feel (What exactly is that giant sphere for? Are all those toxic gases even from Earth?). Then we get access to the interiors of homes, some of which are not at all socialist (from which we can infer that judges or engineers are somewhat better off than ordinary people), and a city appears, filmed in the most interesting way possible. All in a very aesthetic and vibrant black-and-white. Otherwise, the courtroom dominates all the events — a rather crowded and stifling courtroom, where it seems everyone speaks equally and clearly, with the exception of Paraschiv (Valentin Uritescu), who appears to be the only agitated one among all those speaking at the trial.

Judging by the music in the film, composed by Marius Țeicu, we’d say it’s a world that’s as working-class as it is open to the sounds of the West, because the jazz is both diegetic and non-diegetic, and it heightens the intensity of moments that might otherwise have seemed too serious or weighed down by the drama of the events at the factory.

At times, the film feels like a formulaic production. The characters sometimes seem to be driven by a force beyond their control (the script), but Lucian Bratu manages to steer the film into a more interesting territory; at times, it even feels as though we’ve temporarily stepped into a dimension where the factory and the courtroom have vanished. The film’s three layers (the factory, the courtroom, and personal lives) thus seem to be three distinct directions, each with its own aesthetics and moods, and could likely be edited into three separate medium-length films. The factory would be a realm of memories, the courtroom would be the place where the truth and lies of these memories are debated, and personal lives would be existence outside these two realms, where we have a portrait of times that are already over 40 years in the past and see things that today we would likely find in a museum: the factory, the Dacias cars, the cassette player, the tape recorder, the country’s coat of arms, the landline phone, the astrakhan hats — a world without cell phones and without the internet.

We’re treated to a sort of star-studded cast, as the film’s actors appear in several well-known productions, some as much as 10–20 years apart — Ion Fiscuteanu (here the plant director, playing Mr. Lăzărescu in “The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu”, 20 years later), Dorina Lazăr (here the prosecutor, the protagonist of “Angela Goes On” from 1982), Valentin Uritescu (here the worker Paraschiv), or Rudy Rosenfeld and Diana Gheorghian (here in their debut). The protagonists (the engineer — Andrei, played by Puiu Gheorghe Dănilă, and the judge — Atanasiu, played by Corneliu Revent) are, however, better known for their theater roles.

There are issues that could veer into philosophical concepts (What is truth? What is justice? What is actually moral and what is immoral? What is the meaning of life?), but they end up slipping through glances and silences, not through dialogue.

In the end, we arrive at the simple question posed right in the title: in this line-up of guilty parties and varying degrees of guilt, do the suspects deserve our clemency — ours, who have seen them both at work and in their private lives? This pseudo-courthouse drama, in which the viewer becomes a juror, is probably the best structural solution ingeniously devised by Lucian Bratu. The story aims to be about the power of conscience and the acknowledgment of guilt, but it ends up being, in fact, about the human experience of the 1980s, somewhat interrupted by the factory and the courtroom. The film’s imagery and aesthetic choices will stand the test of time because they possess that timeless quality found in anthropological films as well.

As I search for as many sources and as much information as possible about this film, a situation arises that is as unique as it is amusing: the AI-generated search results are a complete jumble. Only by actually watching the film can we discern what is incorrect and what is not: in some search results, Gheorghe Dinică appears (sometimes in a leading role, sometimes in a supporting one), naturally because his name is a sort of paronym for Gheorghe Dănilă. In others, George Constantin stars and the screenplay is by Lucian Pintilie (yet another homonym — the director’s first name, plus the character’s profession — prosecutor). The comments on the film tend to explain the title without providing clear details and go so far as to make aesthetic remarks about all sorts of things that seem true, but in fact could apply to a large number of films. There’s a very peculiar sensation, as if the AI has lost its glasses and only after finding them can it figure out which Lucian or judge is actually being referred to. It’s an interesting era overall, in which AI is halfway between finding references and mixing them up, but most of the time it’s a hilarious tool that hallucinates in an amusing way.

Although counterintuitive, this thought is reassuring: AI cannot distinguish between what is true and what is false, so any serious statement must still be verified through official sources or ignored if it lacks such verification.

Premiere of the week: Grant Mitigating Circumstances? by Lucian Bratu, Thursday, May 21, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

Cinepub is the one and only, legally operating and free of charge, AVoD platform, dedicated to the Romanian cinema: independent, contemporary, or classic. Our comittment to remain “free” means hundreds of monthly hours of volunteer work of a (very) small team of passionate individuals.

Your donation can help us cover some of the costs of securing some distribution rights, covering the basic costs or just keeping the platform updated; in a nutshell, to survive! If you like what we do, if you read what we write, if you watch the films we show, consider supporting us. We need your help. Thank you!

by Bogdan Jitea

One of the consequences of the concentration of propaganda in Ceaușescu-era cinema on the two directions considered priorities – the historical film from the “national epic” cycle and the current affairs film – was that it left filmmakers a relatively healthy margin of artistic freedom for adaptations and period films. Adaptations of Romanian literary classics offered greater freedom of expression than current affairs films, and directors could rely on the authority of the literary text to slip in so-called “little jabs” — small gestures of political defiance that bolstered their status among film audiences as vectors of so-called resistance through culture.

This was also the case with Dan Pița, who partially chose this path following his personal experience while making the documentary film “Philip the Good” (1975), to which significant changes were imposed. According to a secret police (Securitate) informant with whom the director spoke shortly after the film’s premiere, the director expressed dissatisfaction that he could not present “the true reality of life in our country”, “that young people have no money”, “that they work hard for a small wage”, and confessed to him that “he would make films with themes from the past — where he would no longer have teleological problems”.

The success he achieved with “Tănase Scatiu” (1976) — a film adaptation of two novels by Duiliu Zamfirescu for which he received the ACIN Award for Best Director — prompted Pița to take on a similar project the following year, inspired by the writings of George Călinescu. The film adaptation of the novels “Poor Ioanide” and “Black Chest” seemed, however, to be a doomed project. Although it had been included as early as 1972 under Liviu Ciulei’s name in the cinema’s thematic plan, and in May 1974 the writer Eugen Barbu had submitted four screenplays based on the two novels to the Film Studio, all the directors contacted backed out, some refusing to work with the screenwriter (Iulian Mihu, Manole Marcus, Andrei Blaier), others reluctant at the prospect of adapting Călinescu’s prose for the screen (Horia Popescu, Lucian Bratu). Initially attracted to the idea, Sergiu Nicolaescu withdrew from preliminary discussions due to his busy schedule; Gheorghe Vitanidis’s directorial vision was not accepted by the film studio, while Malvina Urșianu refused without offering any further explanation.

Finally, at the end of September 1977, a contract was signed with director Dan Pița to produce the film “Ioanide” in two parts. Another two and a half years would pass, filled with negotiations and delays, with changes and reshoots, with threats from both sides, with resignations and dismissals, before the film finally made it to the big screen. In addition to the complexity of Călinescu’s novels — which totaled 1,600 pages and featured hundreds of characters — the most sensitive aspect of the film adaptation was the political one, aiming to provide an anthropological reconstruction of the aristocratic world of the Ancien Régime, as well as to illustrate the Legionary Movement and its appeal among the intellectual youth.

Discussions between Dan Pița and Film Studio 4 regarding the director’s vision established that the film would be a politically charged biography of an apparently apolitical artist, the architect Ioanide, who journeys from bourgeois interwar individualism to voluntarily joining the machinery of the new socialist world that emerged after World War II. A significant role in the film’s narrative was to be played by the character of the communist Butoescu (later Dragavei), who positively influences Ioanide by raising his awareness of the beneficial role of communists in transforming society. The director conceives a sort of cinematic diptych, consisting of two distinct films that capture two separate eras: that of the years ’39 – 44, of decadence and the dissolution of the parasitic aristocracy, and that of the early 1950s, in which the remnants of this social class, swept away by the great tide of history, deliriously live out their final moments on the margins of a society with which they no longer share anything.

The way in which Dan Pița chose to mask the propagandistic intentions of his sponsors through the highly stylized aesthetic typical of his films sparked endless discussions during screening sessions organized not only by the film studio but also by the Council for Socialist Culture and Education and the Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. Even during filming, the executive producer Platon Pardău — with whom the director was in direct conflict — drew attention to the overly baroque set design and the excessive liberties Pița had taken with the approved director’s cut, introducing new lines from Călinescu’s novels, omitting certain scenes of a propagandistic nature, and disregarding the guidelines set by the political officials in charge of cinema. Subsequently, following personal interventions by the head of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, Ilie Rădulescu, and by the president of the Central Committee for Economic and Social Affairs, Miu Dobrescu, repeated requests were made by the management of Film Studio 4 to include documentary material highlighting the anti-fascist elements and to shorten the scenes featuring the Legionnaires, with the aim of downplaying the movement’s political-religious rituals.

True to his artistic vision, Pița refused to make these changes, which led to the film being shelved for more than a year after shooting wrapped. On November 5, 1979, Pița was handed an ultimatum stating that if he did not make the changes requested by the Council for Socialist Culture and Education leadership, he would be barred from working on other films and would face financial penalties. Comparing the final version of the film, which premiered six months later on July 28, 1980, under the title “Memories from an Old Chest of Drawers”, with the list of requirements found in the production file, it is clear that Dan Pița emerged victorious from this conflict with the political forces in the film industry and managed to impose his directorial vision while making only minor concessions.

This is one of the examples that refutes the notion of relentless communist censorship that crushed any form of personal initiative. On the contrary, the relationship between politics and art was transactional, taking into account the power dynamics within the cultural sphere, the profiles of the political officials responsible for cinema, the degree of solidarity among filmmakers, and, last but not least, their personalities. This was also the case with the negotiation of the film’s lead role. If Dan Pița had wanted Cristea Avram, a Romanian actor living in the West with whom he had filmed several screen tests at Buftea despite the Council for Socialist Culture and Education having expressly forbidden him to do so, the producers would have preferred to cast a big name from among the actors in the country that Romanian cinema had at its disposal. In the end, a compromise was reached, and Ioanide was played by a non-professional, the painter Ion Pacea, who had a “look suited to the character”, and was dubbed by the actor George Constantin.

Set chronologically before the advent of communism, the first part of the film is also the least didactic. For Pița, the greatest challenge was translating the descriptive fervor characteristic of George Călinescu’s prose into cinematic language. Assisted by cinematographer Florin Mihăilescu, the director moves in a Balzacian style, with great ease through the gallery of dozens of characters who gravitate around Ioanide, such as that fluid sequence shot that follows the impassioned Prince Max Hangerliu (Ion Caramitru) through the forest where what appears to be a rape took place, in the midst of a hunting party. Although the great dramas of the 20th century — the rise of fascism and the specter of war — unfold in the background, what dominates is the political apathy of these representatives of the mercantile bourgeoisie and the aristocracy of coat-of-arms, interested exclusively in their own affairs, in inheritances and love affairs, in careerism and social climbing. In contrast, their offspring enthusiastically join the Legionary Movement out of an acute sense of History.

The generational divide is evident on every level. Thus, Ioanide’s structural classicism is contrasted with the emotionalism of his son, Tudorel (Mircea Constantinescu), and to illustrate the artistic radicalism that accompanies the political one, an avant-garde theater performance is staged, which provides the cinematographer with a series of visual tricks, high-angle shots, low-angle shots, and wide-angle distorted frames. Following the violent deaths of his two children on the altar of martyrdom for the Legionary cause, the apolitical Ioanide undergoes a long political journey to Damascus, subtly guided by the communist Dragavei “Botticelli” (Ștefan Iordache), whom the architect shelters in his own home from the long arm of the secret police (Securitate).

This period fresco, which vividly illustrates the moral bankruptcy of an entire social class, is followed by a second part that depicts its dying remnants against the backdrop of the revolutionary upheavals brought about by the new communist regime. Its survivors live off the past — both literally and figuratively. They turn to metempsychosis and spiritualism, are involved in fantastical plans to restore a monarchy under a new dynasty, divide government positions among themselves, and peddle antiques at a flea market on a vacant lot on the outskirts of town.

Ioanide is the only one who, having a trade, manages to adapt to the new regime, which makes use of his skills to design public monuments. Having previously made a living from building funerary monuments, in the new Romania he finally finds fulfillment as an artist, dedicating himself to the construction of socialism. Now the final phase of his process of acquiring political consciousness takes place. Following the suspicious fire at the Popular Theater, which he had just finished building, Ioanide comes under the scrutiny of the Securitate, which investigates him. Denouncing the repressive practices of the 1950s is by no means an act of political courage on the director’s part, but rather part of the regime’s deliberate strategy to distance itself from a period marked by errors and abuses. Beginning with the production of the political film “Power and Truth” (1972), limited criticism of the Dej regime was discreetly encouraged by political officials in charge of cinema, as this served to legitimize Ceaușescu’s new political course as a break from the mistakes of the past.

Ceaușescu’s doctrine of “humanitarian communism” is clearly articulated in an exchange between the Securitate officer Drăgoi and the activist Dragavei. When the former asserts that “a communist must be vigilant”, the latter replies that “a communist must be human”. As for Ioanide, his total commitment to the communist cause comes about following the failed assassination attempt on his life by the Legionary brothers Gavrilcea. “You chose the trowel. They chose the bullet”, the architect confides to Comrade Dragavei. The ending underscores the clear divide between the two worlds, with the aristocrats in poverty heading to the flea market on the outskirts of town to sell their last possessions, while trucks full of workers carrying red flags head toward a nearby construction site.

Situated at the intersection of Dan Pița’s artistic vision and the propagandistic intentions of his political patrons, “Memories from an Old Chest of Drawers” demonstrates the freedoms and limitations filmmakers faced in relation to a state-run film industry with which they sometimes clashed, but with which they most often collaborated through ongoing negotiations to produce films that thus came to bear multiple authorial imprints.

Premiere of the week: Memories from an Old Chest of Drawers by Dan Pița, Thursday, May 11, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

Cinepub is the one and only, legally operating and free of charge, AVoD platform, dedicated to the Romanian cinema: independent, contemporary, or classic. Our comittment to remain “free” means hundreds of monthly hours of volunteer work of a (very) small team of passionate individuals.

Your donation can help us cover some of the costs of securing some distribution rights, covering the basic costs or just keeping the platform updated; in a nutshell, to survive! If you like what we do, if you read what we write, if you watch the films we show, consider supporting us. We need your help. Thank you!

by Mihai Fulger

2006 was a pivotal year for the movement that would come to be known internationally as the New Romanian Cinema. If 2005 had been, for Romanian cinema, the year of “The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu” by Cristi Puiu, several young directors took center stage throughout 2006. That was when Tudor Giurgiu made his feature film debut with “Love Sick”, which was selected for the “Panorama” of the Berlinale, as well as Cătălin Mitulescu and Corneliu Porumboiu, both with films selected at Cannes (“The way I Spent the End of the World” in “Un Certain Regard” — just like “Lăzărescu” the previous year — and “12:08 East of Bucharest” in “Quinzaine,” respectively). Also on the Croisette, the medium-length film “Marilena de la P7,” a (successful) exercise by the late director Cristian Nemescu prior to his feature film debut, was presented in “Semaine de la Critique”. Radu Muntean premiered his second feature film, “The Paper Will Be Blue”, at Locarno. Also in 2006, more than a year after its world premiere in Sarajevo, “Ryna,” Ruxandra Zenide’s debut, produced by Cătălin Mitulescu, was released in Romanian theaters.

In the local film circuit, the films directed by Cătălin Mitulescu, Corneliu Porumboiu, and Radu Muntean were released in October and November, two weeks apart. Since the media had talked so much about these three feature films as movies about the 1989 Romanian Revolution — to the point where one might have thought they were episodes of a trilogy — it is no surprise that audience numbers dropped significantly from one premiere to the next. In fact, even though the other two films also address the events of December 1989 (either from the perspective of their unfolding or from a later one), “The Paper Will Be Blue” is the only true film about the Revolution (and, until Tudor Giurgiu’s “Freedom” in 2023, the only aesthetically valid one in our cinema).

For Cătălin Mitulescu, the “end of the world” referred to in the title is none other than the Revolution that brought about the (violent) break with Ceaușescu — a recurring figure, present from the very first (dreamlike) sequence of the film. However, the director and his co-screenwriter, playwright Andreea Vălean, do not opt — as the filmmakers of several films from that dawn of the New Romanian Cinema (Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Radu Muntean, Cristian Mungiu, etc.) — for a narrative spanning no more than 24 hours.

More ambitious in its epic scope and social commentary, Cătălin Mitulescu’s film presents a marginal, familiar microcosm (both for the characters and the audience) that reflects the evolution of the societal macrocosm (made palpable through its degraded representatives — the secret police officer “Ceaușică”, the “comrade” sent from the center to select children for a “presidential” choir, or the men in the black Volga cars) during the final year of the Ceaușescu regime. A sort of “1989 from spring to fall”, culminating, of course, in a working-class revolution (the “real” one is experienced by the characters through the mediation of black-and-white television screens).

With the exception of the scenes set in institutional and public settings (schools, high schools, hospitals) and the attempts to escape the twilight world, all the events take place in a world — where everyone knows everyone else and news spreads quickly by word of mouth — corresponding to one street, at most two (desolate, like a post-apocalyptic landscape), in the Colentina neighborhood of Bucharest, where the film was shot (and where the director grew up); in fact, that area — whose houses were rumored in 1989 to be slated for demolition to make way for “matchbox” apartment blocks — hadn’t changed much by 2005, the year of production, so efforts to recreate the era were greatly facilitated.

At first, the “grassroots” perspective on the times adopted by the filmmakers seems to belong exclusively to an eight-year-old boy, Lalalilu (Timotei Duma). However, after a short while, the perspective shifts, as Lalalilu yields the viewpoint to his sister, the 17-year-old Eva (Dorotheea Petre), whose perspective becomes dominant.

The motivations of the two protagonists are clearly laid out. Eva is in love with a classmate, Alexandru, nicknamed “Vomică” (Ionuț Becheru), who is also the son of the local secret police officer, but he betrays her. During a class, Alex strikes out — overjoyed that Eva has promised to have sex with him — and causes the bust of Ceaușescu to be smashed in a hallway of the high school (“Nicolae Bălcescu”, as the “Sfântul Sava” high school was then called, the school attended by Cătălin Mitulescu and Andreea Vălean). The two lovers are caught fleeing the scene, so the system demands their self-criticisms to rehabilitate them. Proud, Eva refuses, but Alex complies and, moreover, votes to expel the girl from the Youth Communist League. He faces no major sanctions, but she is transferred to a high school with an industrial focus. At the new school, the other students, noticing her demotion, target the rebellious and introverted teenager. The hostile atmosphere around her strengthens Eva’s resolve to flee the country and build a new life in the West. She grows close to Andrei (Cristian Văraru), the son of dissidents who move into their neighborhood; a classmate of hers at the vocational school, Andrei is willing to do anything to escape socialist Romania.

Lalalilu, who adores his older sister, dreams of running away with her (the submarine sequence), but when he realizes this is impossible, he plans to eliminate the man whom, the boy believes, is the reason Eva wants to flee “to the other side”, far away from him — Ceaușescu, of course. The two protagonists essentially represent the same deluded generation, for whom the overthrow of the dictator and the tearing down of the walls he erected would be tantamount to entering paradise.

Much has been written — perhaps too much — about Cătălin Mitulescu’s nostalgia — or “ostalgia” (a term coined by the East German comedian Uwe Steimle) — in this film, with the director himself fueling this discussion in his interviews. Perhaps too much, because the perspective on the fictional/fantastical universe — which could be accused of idealization (and which is enhanced by Marius Panduru’s superb cinematography, Alexander Bălănescu’s melancholic music, and Daniel Răduță’s inspired set design) — belongs to an eight-year-old boy who, with his sister by his side, believes he lives in the best of all possible worlds. And the filmmaker’s nostalgia, as much as it shines through in the film, is for an age, not an era.

“The Way I Spent the End of the World” is, without a doubt, a coming-of-age film in which the director and his co-screenwriter drew on their own teenage memories. The dramatic and emotional scenes are occasionally interrupted by welcome moments of humor — obviously, especially in Lalalilu’s narrative thread, but also in Eva’s, such as during the physical preparations for the escape. The funniest line in the film also belongs to Eva. When the “emotionalist” Andrei, in Adam’s costume, declares to her: “To succeed, we must work without emotions or feelings. I am more than just this body you might fall in love with”, she replies ironically: “You’d better eat a pie”.

The cast is undoubtedly one of the film’s strengths. Unfortunately, the two lead actors, who showed tremendous promise, did not go on to have the brilliant careers they had every right to hope for. Timotei Duma, Cătălin Mitulescu’s discovery, was also cast by Bogdan George Apetri in “Outbound” (2010), as the son of the protagonist played by Ana Ularu, and appeared in a few short films during those years, but then disappeared from the scene. Even Dorotheea Petre, here in her second major role (after the lead in “Ryna”), which won the Best Actress award in the “Un Certain Regard” section at Cannes, enjoyed a brief period of glory, but in the last decade has appeared far too rarely on the big screen. Even though they have far fewer scenes, Carmen Ungureanu (the radiant figure of the mother), Mircea Diaconu (the father, a failed Ceaușescu impersonator), Jean Constantin (Nea Florică, a dramatic contre-emploi role), Nicolae Praida (Nea Titi, the one-of-a-kind old man), Grigore Gonța (“Ceaușică”), Corneliu Țigancu (Bulba), Valentin Popescu (the cool music teacher), or Florin Zamfirescu (the industrial high school principal) all play roles that linger in the viewers’ memory.

The director confidently guides the extras — mostly non-professional actors, all well-chosen — giving the film a documentary quality. The vocational school students and the neighbors attending the christening are genuine; you can’t help but believe them. However, “The Way I Spent the End of the World” has been interpreted too much in a realistic vein, downplaying its otherwise essential dreamlike quality. Even the apparent happy ending, in which even the villain “Ceaușică” (who, in a ’90s film about the Revolution and the subsequent transition era, when “our country” was no longer “ours”, would have become a successful businessman) joins Lalalilu’s gang — is this not another dreamlike sequence, echoing the first scene and foreshadowed by the leitmotif of the steamboat or the young protagonist’s frequent feverish states?

“The Way I Spent the End of the World” is a film open to multiple interpretations that has stood the test of time.

Premiere of the week: The Way I Spent the End of the World, by Cătălin Mitulescu, Thursday, May 7, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO

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