Summer Holiday (2009)

conquest of past, summer, the search of happiness, a family, two friends. a special Romanian film for its profound honesty. nothing need to demonstrate, nothing useful for convince. only a story about few people and ordinaries experience. at first sigh, a film about nothing. and that is its great virtue. because decade by decade the Romanian cinema was victim of a specific thesis. under communism - political thesis. after 1990 - social demonstration. Boogie has the rare gift to not be vehicle for any form of propaganda. it is only the honest portrait of a family in holiday. few good young actors. a smart script. decent performances. a story without high ambitions. that is its great virtue. and the difference by a cinema lost in different demonstration's forms.

I do not know where to start.Plot wise it is a failure. There should be a clash. But because of the scripting errors and bad acting the viewer ends up with a snapshot of some pathetic life. The characters are only cardboard silhouettes and everything feels like a shot. The main guy can be guessed because of his interactions. The wife is only nagging. There is a ray of light - she might be under some stress. But the stress is never there. The two pot-bellies turn out to be far from what they insinuated and they are failures, yet the two characters are also ironed out well so there is no trace of life in them. Even the two prostitutes (Roxana and Ramona) act like schoolgirls in love. The second one is so nice to take the money after. Bottom line this script shouts the wet dreams of two overgrown brats who know nothing about life in general. And everything turns even worse: the director is one of them so the whole interaction is something of a twisted fantasy lacking realism.The acting is bad even for a first try. And these are called actors! Boogie acts flat and his voice is unsure, almost like forgetting the lines. His wife is nagging, but at the same time she is cold, disconnected, like wearing a suit that doesn't fit. If that was acting than the actress would have been ideal being Ramona. The two "buddies" act so lame I'm left with the impression that is their life story and not some acting. And even if that is acting it is totally wrong as they should have been adventurous. Instead of being two guys who have seen the hardships of life they are two mama's boys who have to pay in order to receive sexual gratification. Only the prostitutes act like scripted - like two school girls collated from another movie probably. They even pause in mid-sentence as a shy girl would do.The execution is appalling. This is something common for all post '89 Romanian movies. Although the equipment gets better and better the people who use it seem less qualified each year. And all this bad lighting is called "natural camera". No, it's just the lack of qualified personnel.Even as a whole this movie is terrible. It has the name of the main character, but he does not suffer any change. This is a mere snapshot of his life. A far more sincere title would have been "A Night with a Prostitute".In the end the audience might be left puzzled. Given the anachronism pointed out here on IMDb - although the director wrote the script he can't change the location to his actual filming location. He can't move the camera enough to lose the recognizable bits of landscape. And certainly he is unable to do that in post-processing. One girl is named Roxana, yet Ramona is called Roxana in real life. It would have been impossible to change that as well as the other issue with the boys wanting to go bowling, not noticing they are already next to the bowling alley.This film would have made a wonderful 4 minute feature. 30 seconds to show the estranged son. 40 seconds to prove the marriage is on the rocks. Another minute or so to present the lame boys night out and the rest to push for the middle aged drama - torn between a nagging wife and a lover by the hour. Only that the boys aren't middle aged.They say corruption is rampant in Romania. This would be a good example. Who in his or her right mind would pay for this waste of film? The state owned CNC. Weird. It would be far juicier to read who slept with whom to push this "product" forward. And it is pretty obvious the waste as an attempt to justify the given money. Starting with the pointless stops in acting (thoughtful some might say) and ending up with the pointless portable baby bed that can be seen through the door in the ending scene.This production should have received a minus four, only that 1 is the lowest available.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

I regret wasting two hours of my life with this film. Plot-wise, it is utterly pointless, Dragos Bucur's unconvincing struggle with his midlife crisis managed only to annoy the hell out of me. Frankly, it was so bad that it became uncomfortable to watch and I even considered walking out of the theatre, but I endured eventually. Also, from a technical point of view, this film is the perfect example of a standard Romanian production. Sound quality and cinematography are ridiculous. The background noises manage to drown half of the lines (not that one misses much wit there). Everything that could go wrong in a typically Romanian film goes wrong. There is really no point in seeing this for yourself, save two hours of your life and watch something else.

It's no exaggeration that "Boogie" could be considered, up to a certain point, a Romanian twinner of "American Beauty" - it's the same kind of drama, within its specific frame for early-middle-aged people. The characters here are in their early thirties; one could easily imagine that the incipient problems they are facing now will evolve into the full-blown tragedy acted by Kevin Spacey and Annette Benning.Fact is that Radu Muntean's movie is not only deep and grave, but masterfully made. Same as in his previous two works, Radu proves again that he has a very precise and powerful feeling of the camera lens, picking in the most discreet way exactly those details and angles that serve to build-up the tension. The paradox here is that, although nothing spectacular is happening, the inner stress of the situation builds-up to almost unbearable levels. An important role is played by the several-minutes-long shots, patiently depicting the slow-paced actions and dialogs, with the surprising result of a very intense load of anxiety and apprehension getting pent-up.Definitely, "Boogie" is carrying forth the well-fated New Generation in Romanian cinema!