As this blog is about music, I don’t usually write off-topic, but now I have to deviate a bit from the subject and tell the experience of “the best Romanian movie” – 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days (4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile).

I wanted to see it because it was so highly praised, both at Cannes and in Romania, a lot of people recommended it and so on. Unfortunatelly, I was proved again that I should not listen to all of this and that things which might impress certain people (or juries) fail to make an average movie a good one.

First of all, the movie gets some credit for having quite an interesting subject, probably even more interesting for foreigners who could not imagine the experience of communist times and how they can affect normal lives. And therefore it takes a sad story about an abortion and makes is sadder.

Still, despite the good idea, everything in it kind of….sucks ! The entire thing is played with so much drama that it looses any sense of reality. The actors are playing with so much sadness on their face that you would expect crying every other minute and so on.

Then, the movie has some really odd parts which might seem intriguing at first but in the end they have no point whatsoever. For example, you watch a girl going by tram for more than one minute and you expect something will happen. Actually, no, she just gets out of the tram and then enters a building and there, only there, starts the action. What is the point, though, in showing every detail of a tram ride ?

Also, you see the movie sometimes shot with an amateur-like camera, and you would expect that it all fits. Actually, no, again, in the end it seems just like a director’s excercise to try something new. What’s the point in this, too ?

The movie could have been so much more intense if it only condensed itself into half of the time – and maybe then you would have went out of the cinema with some feelings about it but this way, it just gets so boring. After about 60 minutes I really hoped for it to end or for something to happen, something not that predictible, actually you just sit and watch the same story going on the regular course, a course you can predict after the first 20 minutes.

As a conclusion, yes, the subject might be intriguing, but you better watch a documentary on this or read a book, the film it’s just not worth it !