SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL(OFFICIAL COMPETITION): Romanian director Calin Peter Netzer calls his intense, Berlin Golden Bear-winning story about an overpowering mother and her grown son 'a slice of life almost as authentic as a documentary". This it assuredly is.
a film with a deep sense of humanity
The new Romanian cinema (The Death of Mr Lazarescu; 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, et al) has established a remarkably consistent attitude towards authenticity, emerging as a flag-waver for naturalism in a postmodern, media-saturated world when that aesthetic had often been regarded, somewhat glibly, as passé.
But while an acute sense that actual life is unfolding is crucial to this film’s effect, there is more going on than some semi-random slice of domestic banality – as is always the case with successful examples of realism. Netzer has taken compelling acting, psychological insight and an unerring sense of drama – even melodrama – to create a film with a deep sense of humanity.
Mother-love has long been associated with Hollywood 'women’s’ melodrama, of course, a genre that, like realism, is often looked down-upon as dated, but Netzer takes this commonly overheated subject matter by analysing his characters psychologically and refusing to let them boil over the edge of the pan.
The mother is Cornelia (Luminta Gheorghiu), a 50-year-old, comfortably middle-class married woman (Cornelia) frustrated and made jealous by her grown-up son Babu’s marriage to Carmen, of whom she clearly disapproves.
After a handful of establishing scenes, Cornelia receives a shocking phone call: Babu (Bogdan Dumitrache) is under arrest for knocking down and killing a child who was dashing across the freeway. Rushing to the police station with her sister, she finds the dead kid’s angry male relative incandescent with rage. Babu had been breaking the speed limit and the chances of his escaping a prison sentence looks grim until Cornelia’s mama-bear instincts mix in with her middle-class sense of entitlement. Like an absolute pro, she sets to work to, among other things, get the key witness to change his statement and ultimately to persuade the bereaved family – who turn out to be impoverished peasants – not to press charges.
This could have been a merely worthy film but three extraordinary, relatively lengthy scenes help to transform it into something far more memorable: a meeting in a cafe where Cornelia discusses a bribe to the accident’s chief witness is followed by a series of intimate revelations between Cornelia and her hated daughter-in-law. The incredible final scene, best left undescribed in detail, is remarkable for the way Netzer heightens its emotional intensity by getting the actors to underplay.
What makes Cornelia fascinating is not just her rapaciousness and determination – though that too (at key moments people watching this with me were gasping at what she was coming out with) – but also the power of her love, albeit a love that smothers. Like King Lear, she is a monstrous parent, yet pitiable.
Even if you have never seen a Romanian film, you will have no doubt already twigged that this is not a conventionally beautiful film with attractive lighting and music (indeed there is no musical soundtrack). At the same time, neither does it fall into the trap of fetishising ugliness (a trap ensnaring France’s Jacques Audiard on the recent Rust and Bone, another film treating melodramatic story elements naturalistically). Notable is the relatively brisk pacing, despite the use of unusually long takes (so often associated with meditative cinema). Instead Netzer stages the drama energetically, the cameras moving swiftly to keep up with the players while keeping clear of the excesses of wobbly cam.
Share
