Warning: there are some spoilers in this review.
This supposedly shocking Romanian film starts with a long, extended verbal fight during a family reunion, at which point I thought I was really going to hate this movie. The film, though, gets a bit better as it goes along. Victor is a widower with six grown children, three men and three women in their twenties and thirties. His offspring includes a set of twins, Romeo a boy and Sasha a girl. The fight gets started when, at the reunion, Sasha learns indignantly that her father, who is an obstetrician, during the Ceasescu regime, a period in which abortion was banned, denounced to the authorities women who were seeking to end their pregnancies. Victor replies to his daughter that his opposition to abortion allowed her to live, since her mother wanted an abortion at the time. Anyway, the fight ends, and as we learn more about the different characters, we get the central gimmick of the film: the two twins are lovers, and eventually she gets pregnant by his brother. This situation is seen as only slightly out of the normal. During the film, we see several scenes where one of the family members gets indignant on learning that the twins are lovers, but five minutes later, seems ready to accept them.
Despite all the talk we listen to, the film doesn't have a lot of interesting things to say about either abortion on incest. Still, the movie holds some interest even if the scenario strains credibility. A great performance by Alina Grigore is Sasha, the twin who gets pregnant, is a plus for this so so movie.
This supposedly shocking Romanian film starts with a long, extended verbal fight during a family reunion, at which point I thought I was really going to hate this movie. The film, though, gets a bit better as it goes along. Victor is a widower with six grown children, three men and three women in their twenties and thirties. His offspring includes a set of twins, Romeo a boy and Sasha a girl. The fight gets started when, at the reunion, Sasha learns indignantly that her father, who is an obstetrician, during the Ceasescu regime, a period in which abortion was banned, denounced to the authorities women who were seeking to end their pregnancies. Victor replies to his daughter that his opposition to abortion allowed her to live, since her mother wanted an abortion at the time. Anyway, the fight ends, and as we learn more about the different characters, we get the central gimmick of the film: the two twins are lovers, and eventually she gets pregnant by his brother. This situation is seen as only slightly out of the normal. During the film, we see several scenes where one of the family members gets indignant on learning that the twins are lovers, but five minutes later, seems ready to accept them.
Despite all the talk we listen to, the film doesn't have a lot of interesting things to say about either abortion on incest. Still, the movie holds some interest even if the scenario strains credibility. A great performance by Alina Grigore is Sasha, the twin who gets pregnant, is a plus for this so so movie.