One of the best movies of the year - and, definitely, of the Romanian cinema all over.
After "12:08: East of Bucharest" (aka "A fost sau n-a fost" - original title), Cornel Porumboiu does it again: an incisive and tender, empathic and ruthless look into our contemporary humanity. It brings back memories of Kafka's "Trial": the blind mechanism of Law, meant to help us live better and, because of so many machine-like people, turned into a device for destroying lives. In the role of the young policeman who loses his faith into the system, Dragos Bucur brings on screen another of his memorable performances - subtle, deep, finely tuned.
But the main virtue of this excellent movie, of course, is Cornel's directing - credible, original, precise. The static long shots, creating pent-up inner tensions... the unbearable waiting scenes, under a leaden sky... the discrete plastic compositions of the frame... the insidious rhythm... the careful attention to the minutest details - everything, with a due meaning and a perfectly weighted impact.
Special kudos for the pivotal scene built up around Mirabela Dauer's song "I Don't Leave You Love" - a rare piece of abstruse idiocy, used as a main axis for the protagonist's confrontation with the life's absolute absurdity. The scene is so masterfully built and shot, that it makes us scream laughing (in Cannes, the audience was delirious) - but the ultimate meaning is tragic... this being Porumboiu's definitory characteristic - as he said himself: "comical authors are often the saddest ones of all".
