Truth be told, Romanians don’t have the best of reputations in the world: whether they’re
defacing websites as a testament of national pride or are accused of
various crimes abroad, where they seek residence in a bid to escape the harsh realities of life at home, they come with a rap sheet that leaves much to be desired. Yet, when it comes to making film, Romanians simply don’t have it in their DNA to fail, says the
Los Angeles Times in a review of Dan Muntean’s “Tuesday, After Christmas.”
The film was just screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and reviews coming in are nothing short of raving. Surely, the film stands little chances of making a killing in US theaters, even if it has moved away from the Communist underlying theme and focused more on the story of a man in crisis, but that takes nothing of its value, says the report. They say strong essences come in very small vials and this is precisely what would best apply to this bold, albeit yet unappealing for foreign distributors, film.
“Romanians can’t make a bad film. It’s, like, illegal in their country. Or at least not in their DNA. Over the last four years, filmmakers from the small Eastern European nation have swept into the south of France every May and put far bigger, more storied film cultures to shame, the US and the fiercely proud host country among them. It started primarily with the critics’ favorite ‘The Death of Mr. Lazarescu’ in 2006, continued the following year with the powerful abortion drama ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ (which won the Palme d’Or) and hasn’t abated since. […] This year the streak continues – and perhaps gets even stronger – with ‘Tuesday, After Christmas,’ an infidelity drama from a director named Radu Muntean who’s been here several times before,” the LA Times writes.
Described by The Hollywood Reporter as a film in pure neo-neo-realism fashion, it does little to dramatize the events that it presents, or to intervene in their course. Even the soundtrack is limited to background noise coming from radios and television sets, so truly the director’s influence is as little felt as possible. In being so faithful to the story, Muntean manages a feat that few directors in Hollywood can boast of: make it real, says the aforementioned publication. In doing so, it also teaches Hollywood a lesson.
“No US distributor has yet bought this movie (or the other, equally promising Romanian film here, ‘Aurora,’ from the same director as ‘Mr. Lazarescu’). While ‘Tuesday, After Christmas’’ subject manner and style are eminently accessible to an American audience (it helps that, unlike a lot of the new Romanian cinema, this one is set not in the 1980s Communist period but the modern one, in a decidedly middle-class milieu; Romanian film characters have moved up in the world), we fear that the rocky commercial market for these kinds of dramas will scare off buyers. It won’t matter. The Romanians will keep making great movies, whether or not we turn out to see them,” the LA Times concludes by saying.
For the full review, please refer
here.
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