Marti, dupa Craciun

The Romanian film "Marti, Dupa Craciun" (2010) was shown in the United States with the title, "Tuesday, After Christmas." The movie is co-written and directed by Radu Muntean.

Many movies show female full frontal nudity, so the fact that this occurs in this movie is no great surprise. What is surprising is that the film opens with two of the principals in bed. They have obviously just made love, and what we hear and see is their casual, languid talk right afterward. The woman has no reason to cover herself, so we see the nudity within the first minute or two of the film. Definitely different.

The man, Paul, is played by Mimi Branescu. (Apparently Mimi can be a man's name in Romania.) He looks and acts like an Eastern European George Clooney, although he's not as handsome as Clooney.

We learn that the woman, played by Maria Popistasu, is Raluca, who has been having an affair with Paul for months. She is certainly young and beautiful. (In fact, all of her is beautiful, as we learn in the first few minutes of the film.) What sets Raluca apart from most "other women" is that she's a dentist. (I can't remember ever seeing a movie where one of the women actors is a dentist.) In fact, it was through dentistry that she and Paul met, because Paul's daughter is her patient.

Mirela Oprisor plays Adriana, Paul's wife. She too is very beautiful, although that aspect of her appearance is played down in the movie. She too is intelligent, and she loves Paul.

That's the basic plot of the film. Paul has to decide. It's Christmas, and, in the context of the film, one of the women is going to get Paul for a Christmas present, and one is going to get left by Paul as her present.

The film proceeds almost like a documentary. We meet Raluca's mother, Paul's parents, Adriana's sister, and some family friends. Paul and Adriana take their daughter to Raluca's clinic. Obviously, Paul and Raluca are exquisitely aware of the awkwardness of the situation, but, equally obviously, Adriana is not.

All of these essentially normal activities take place with the clock ticking--in Paul's mind and in ours. Either way, this is going to end badly for someone. We just don't know who that someone will be, and what will happen after Paul decides. It's not a great movie if you want violent action or broad dramatic strokes. It is a great movie if you want to see a portrayal of normal people in an all-too-normal situation.

I enjoyed this movie and recommend it. The only weakness is that it wasn't clear to me what qualities Paul had that would make both women want him as their partner. He's attractive enough, apparently virile enough, and fairly well off financially. However, Raluca knows he's cheating on his wife. What makes her think he won't cheat on her? Adrianna knows that he's away a lot, and, even when he's there, he's not particularly loving or caring. Still, there it is. Two women want him, and only one will have him.

We saw this film at the excellent Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House in Rochester. It will work well on DVD, because all of the important scenes take place indoors. I think it's definitely worth finding and seeing.

This is a "slice of life" film. To give you an example, Fight Club is about the few months in which the main character establishes his first fight club and network of franchises across the country. It's a story that spans quite some time, so some parts are compressed - the highlights are shown, the rest is implied or shown in montages.

Some films focus on a much thinner slice, the peak of the story. This story attempts that. We are not to see the beginning of the relationship, the honeymoon phase, the stagnation and then the affair. We are introduced to the characters already in the middle of the affair period.

The "peak" of this story is the time Paul has to make a decision. Without spoiling the story (not that it could be spoiled), Paul has to chose between these two women, supposedly, according to the synopsis. With deductive reasoning, you can already guess that he is not the one who says "you have to make a choice" - this man is a cheater, his actions already show that he wants both at the same time. So you can guess that this "make a choice" ultimatum was made to him by someone.

But there isn't really much of a choice. We are shown his two lives, a completely normal, uneventful domestic life with his wife and child on one hand and a new relationship on the other, with more passion, since it's the start. In short, one has brushing teeth, shaving and quiet dinners and the other has pillow talk.

This is all from the photos, there are no spoilers here.

Almost everything is in real time, meaning, we're not given the highlights. You know how pillow talk lasts 1 minute in films, whereas in real life it's 15? Don't worry about it, here you get the whole 15. You know how waiting rooms last a long time whereas in films it's seconds? Well, it's all in here. Do you want to see people Christmas shopping? In real time? It's here. It's all long takes.

This film is a short film with little story fattened up with banal scenes that add nothing.

Surely some will see it as some sort of Romanian version of American Beauty, i.e. the middle class dream is not all that great, but this film is seriously overrated. The reviews are all glowing, but it only has 7/10. The number of people giving it 9 and above is almost equal to the number of people giving it 5 and under.

Consider that there is some pre-filtering going on. The average person would not watch a Romanian film to begin with, so the only people voting are people used to more minimalist foreign films. It's still not good though.

The cinema of Romania has experienced many difficult decades, where filmmakers were not allowed to tell the truth about what was happening in their country. This film does not have any of these shackles. Instead, the director showed the real Romania, reality as it is, without a pinch of salt to boost the entertainment value.

Either add a bit of spice to the film to make it more enjoyable or cut it smarter to only show the best parts of this normal life. Even if I were to edit my own boring life, I'd be able to make it interesting by editing out the boring parts.

This film does not only not cut out the boring parts, it is just the boring parts. Those parts are the main focus and that's why it's getting such high praise from people who hate car-chase scenes and roof top fights. I hate car chases too, but I don't want to see a complete, uncut dental appointment from parking to exit.

My friends did not finish this film but I did. They didn't even bother asking what happened later.

Don't say you weren't warned.

A Romanian man must choose between his wife and his lover. The pacing is very deliberate. Scenes are filmed in long takes and little happens in terms of plot or action. However, the leisurely approach allows the viewer to get to know the characters, who are all very real. The characters and situations are so real that one can empathize with their plight. The acting is excellent all around. Branescu is not able to shine in the unsympathetic role of the man in the love triangle. However, Oprisor as the wife and Popistasu as the lover both turn in wonderfully natural performances. Muntean is a talented writer-director, someone to keep an eye on.

Although the movie appears to be a modern day cliché in film making just by reading the plot summary, it is anything but. Yes it's a story about a much used concept of love triangles, yes it's a story about heartbreaks and infidelity, but seldom does one see a movie taking out the time to delicately develop the situational markers, the palpitating tension and the deep-rooted feeling of guilt and remorse. This movie paints an unadulterated picture of love, disloyalty and heartbreak. Where other movies include this concept as a plot enhancement or twist, director Radu Muntean sketches a brilliant exposé on a man's struggle between his love and his guilt amidst the delicate balance of family.

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?