Tuesday, After Christmas (2010)

Nice opening scene, and that's it!We meet the characters, but are never given any reason to care about what happens to them... there's no reason for one woman to love this jerk (the male lead), let alone two. No motivation is given for any of the characters' actions. All of the dialog is trite, predictable, and banal. The only bright note is a small, ordinary child, with one cute line about Barbie toys. I hope she gets to act in a better movie!I watched this with my husband, and usually we both like foreign films (we lived in Germany for many years). But this film proves that Europeans can produce clunkers just like Hollywood.You end up hoping they'll all be drowned in the Danube (except the kid).

I questioned whether I wanted to see yet another examination of a failed marriage, but I am glad I watched this. The thing that sets it apart is its total believability. There are no high voltage fireworks as in many movies such as a Bergman film, where the partners rip the flesh off of each other by rehashing all possible old wounds. Instead we get a drama that plays almost like a documentary.I confess that about half way through I was feeling that things were going a bit slow by concentrating on routine daily chores, like getting groceries, shopping for presents, taking the daughter to the dentist, and so forth. But this served to establish that the life of the couple Paul and Adriana had devolved into little more than daily routine. You could almost extrapolate what their lives would be until the end. And I think this is what Paul was seeing when the opportunity to change course presented itself by his striking up a relationship with the attractive Raluca. This is not to say that there are no dramatic scenes to be had later in the film, but those scenes are well motivated by what has gone before. The scene where Paul tells Adriana the truth is exceptionally well acted and is a bit painful to watch, since it is so honestly scripted. You may come away feeling that Paul has made a very bad, or even deplorable, decision, but you understand his motivations and realize he is not a monster. I think this movie captures the essence of thousands of similar stories that are being played out every day in real life.

Given the commonplaceness of the subject of the movie, one may have thought that the director would have liked to address the question of adultery from a possibly new (moral, artistic) angle. This was my reason for watching the movie, and I had to be disappointed.The characters had incredibly little depth, with the notable exception of the lover (the dentist) whom I found to give a very sensible performance. As far as the main character is concerned, there is very little struggle, care for other's feelings, humbleness. One may view his character as a depiction of the stereotypical "romanian man". The Romanian Man whose masculinity has to be praised, for whom it is completely normal to have both a wife and a lover, and who has to be congratulated if he decides to do anything about it. I am not sure how many such stereotypical "romanian men" are there in Romania (possibly few, but the character did ring a bell), but I would say the main character makes an interesting reflection on current society.As has already been remarked, the conversation is *boring*, there is no spark of life, of joy, of complicity among these middle-class busy people. No love either. Is this a depiction of Romania's today middle-class marital relations? Where all the conversation revolves around work and the last things we bought, but there's no talk of the soul? Is this why the action takes place around Christmas, the pinnacle of consumerism of the year? The reason that I am giving the movie 5 points is that the performances of the actors are, in fact, very good and the characters are natural and believable. The opening scene is truly refreshing and the scene at the doctor's carries a very palpable tension. The problem is the remaining hour...In conclusion, I found the above movie very plain, boring, and somewhat depressing for the reasons described above. Also, it was filmed in a very factual, realistic manner with no questions raised. So, then, my question is: what is the message of this movie?

Don't let yourself be scared away by the scarcity and banality of the plot written on the main page here. It's not the fault of the person who wrote it, you simply cannot add more. It sounds like a story which has been told in books and movies for hundred and thousand of times. So what's so special here? The dramatic tension that builds up and the truthfulness to ... well, to life (I know it sounds quite mundane)are quite special. Don't expect blows and strokes a la "Damage" or "La paura", you won't find them here.After Christmas, after the time of (profane) rituals, conventions and mystifying is gone, Paul, the leading male character, hopes to begin anew, to be more truthful to himself, although knowing this will cause a lot of sorrow to some of his beloved ones. There is nothing exterior that forces him to confess the truth, knowing that this confession will bring an irremediable change to his life. Somebody else could live on, performing the same rituals and conventions (of family life, of life as a married adult with a child), Paul can't. It's up to anyone to decide how much convention and steadiness one is willing to accept feeling the growing "burden of the heart".This is probably director Radu Muntean's most cohesive movie up to date. With his previous attempt to make a Romanian-middle-class-drama, "Boogie", I felt that there is something (small, indeed) missing, there was still something round-up. Not the case with this movie, nothing too much or too less, my grouchy self piped down. Great performances by the main actors, incredible tense scenes (the bed scene, at the dentist's, visit to Constanta, confession, Christmas Eve), naturalistic dialogue, etc. Like in other young Romanian director's movies (Puiu, Mungiu, Porumboiu), expect quite a lot of long takes, minimalist soundtrack, no hyperboles, no black and white painting. Just truthfulness.