Tags: film review, Greenbelt, Romanian, Solas
Date: 26 June 2010 14:45:04
On Thursday we went to the wonderful Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) to see a new Romanian film, "The Happiest Girl in the World". There's a review of the film from the Guardian here. There was also an (English) article on a Romanian TV station blog about the burgeoning Romanian film industry, the blog itself doesn't appear to exist any more but the article still appears to be cached, here.
I'm not sure that HD is that convinced about the Romanian film renaissance (I've dragged him along to several films now!) - but I for one am really appreciating it. Apart from anything else it means I have an hour or two when I can listen to the language as it's spoken properly (as opposed to reading it myself, when it sounds like Romanian with an English accent in my head). I was pleased that I was able to follow a lot of the film with minimal reliance on the subtitles, and when the subtitles appeared before the dialogue I could guess what was going to be said reasonably well.
The film itself was fun, I enjoyed it, though I'm not sure I'd quite describe it as a comedy. It reminded me a lot of Mike Leigh/Ken Loach type films, where although you could probably say they were comedies it's more the kind of comedy where you smile because you know it's so true to life rather than because it's funny haha. Certainly when they were filming the advert (over and over again) it reminded me of lots of adverts I've seen on Romanian TV over the years, where they get the winner to read out a script, flash their prize and promote the product. And the basic premise - 16 year old Delia's parents wanting to sell her prize so they could get the money and no longer have to struggle - certainly struck me as very true to life.
So, if you get the chance I'd say it was worth seeing. Other Romanian films I've seen include "12:08 East of Bucharest" (quite why it's called that in English when the Romanian title actually translates as "Was it or wasn't it?" I don't know) - this did make me laugh; "4 Months 3 Weeks 2 days" (about a girl seeking an illegal abortion during the Ceausescu years - harrowing but scarily true to life); and "The Death of Mr Lazarescu" - again touted as a black comedy, but I'd say the operative word was definitely black. All well worth seeing, in my view. A couple of others I've not seen yet but which come highly recommended are "California Dreamin'" (I have this on DVD, just not ever got round to it, must rectify that soon) and "Tales from the Golden Age" (produced by "4,3,2"'s director Cristian Mungiu) which got rave reviews on Radio 4.
I think I've written before about how I find watching films quite stressful. Maybe it's because these are Romanian so I'm curious and know the culture and a lot of the background stuff already I can cope with them more than many. Whatever, I think they're worth a view if you get the chance.
In other news, we're off to Solas for the day tomorrow (Surfing and Tractor Girl amongst others are already there for the whole weekend so am looking forward to catching up with them). There's no way we're going to make it to Greenbelt this year sadly, far too near to my thesis deadline, but this will be nice to get a little taste of it a bit closer to home anyway.