THE “WORLD” OPINION – A MUST SEE
Unknown in our latitudes, Emanuel Pârvu, 45 years old, entered the competition at Cannes in May, with this third feature film clearly affiliated with the “school” of Cristian Mungiu – under whose direction he appeared as an actor -, a filmmaker with acute realism , powerful excavator. of the small and big Romanian dirt carefully pushed under the carpet. A tough model that Emanuel Pârvu chose, ambitious, but not without risk: Mungiu was especially the recipient Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007 with Four months, three weeks, two daysa chronicle in laser form of a student who wants to have an abortion at the end of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s reign.
The action of the film takes place in the Danube Delta, a singular and bucolic region, preserved, as if cut off from everything, cultivating an ecosystem unique in the world, whose film will show us that its psycho-sociological equivalent is obviously less enviable. The opening is at night, two teenagers hug, kiss.
A shot further, under the harsh light of the family’s kitchen, we recognize one of them, Adi, his face badly swollen. An attack took place in the Ellipse, the homophobic nature of which will soon be established. The film is the story of the investigation that will lead, from great fears to small cowardice, less to establish the truth than to disguise it.
Dramaturgical imbalance
An entire society, where everyone plays their role as they imagine they should, conspires to hide a truth discovered very early in the story. But also to isolate Adi, willingly or by force, in order to avoid the opprobrium that would not fall primarily on the parents, but also on the authorities and, therefore, on the peace and respectability of this resort area. The pair of parents, more concerned with their reputation than their son’s happiness. The police chief, thinking of his early retirement and in a hurry to end the affair because he is subordinate to a long-armed local magnate, the father of Adi’s two young attackers. Finally, the exorcist priest, a dull power derived from an immemorial obscurantism.
As if from another world, the unexpected arrival of the state social services, called to help the young man, will for some time relaunch an intrigue that tends to go around in circles, and imagined according to the idea of the maximum contrast between the sun and the softness of the wind of the region and the windy human turpitudes that incubate in this heavenly nature.
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