User reviews

picture of second chance.a love story. a doctor. a nurse. a travel across country. all as shadow of victory against sickness. as sign of a miracle. or, only, cage of deep pride. result - memories. confessions.a travel in heart of past with a meeting as seed. good actors. beautiful music. touching images. testimony about a Romania face. noble, fragile, fruit of a image revolution of regime who, after Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia , desires to be perfect partner for West. monologue, introspection, analysis of feelings, regrets, taste of strange happiness, identification of personal life with social status, images from Bukovina, a special love scene in context of coyly Communist regime, the delicate beauty of Irina Petrescu, one of best roles for Iurie Darie, the influence of Nicolae Breban who gives to film nuances of literary work and air of a lost country. seductive and refined. a story of love, vanity and need to survive.

Upon the story written by Nicolae Breban, the film is using a pseudo- psycho-analytical approach for a personal story of doctor Palaloga(a love story). Unlike the communist movies of the 70ies and 80ies, which were bringing the political system into characters' inner clashes, The Mischievous Adolescent is more in tune with French and Italian movies of that time. Characters say important things, do not wallow around shallow and petty conversation (for big dialogue see also Suta de lei, The Hundred lei). Music is also used brilliantly - an urban, rhythmic music to pace the story up and down. Camera movements and angles, the non- linear editing - just like La capătul liniei, At the end of the train tracks - are creating an urban environment for the urban story.

One of the few Romanian films in which you can see a naked actress, Irina Petrescu. Not frontal nudity like Réka Nagy in "Saint Teresa and the Devils" (1972), but just a tiny breast, seen from the profile, and a little ass, also from the profile and from a distance. That's all that's special in this movie, the story is super boring, and the actors are completely embarrassing. I know this better than anyone because I was born in communist Romania in 1958, I lived there until 2007, life was not like that. One star for Irina Petrescu's nakedness and another one because it's not a communist indoctrination like most Romanian films made before 1990.

like many films from the Comunist period, a slice from the atmosphere of that time. the dialogues. the references to the contemporary French cinema. the trip. the image. the music. the idea of love who saves . the sickness as repentance. Iurie Darie does an admirable job as Pralonga and that is the high virtue of film and source of regret for the other roles of this real good actors. psychological film, inspired by Nicolae Breban work, having, as splendid ingredient the music of Tiberiu Olah and the beautiful performance of Irina Petrescu, proposing the same fight against the time and rediscover of life in its essential pieces, values, force and beauty, strange for young viewer but useful for the old one to translate the desire of regime to be accepted and the try of director to escape his work from the web of propaganda, cold and, at first sigh, unrealistic, expression of a form of poetry of word and image who could surprise, it remains precious instrument for understand the past .