La rébellion silencieuse

Classic Romanian film about nothing. 40 minutes into the movie and no direction, conflict or character sense whatsoever. Just minutes of film passing by. Got about 250k Euro from the state to be develiped, though. Nice catch.

Like the other review said, this is a movie about nothing. Movies about nothing are a romanian specialty, we are very good at this. Loooong booooring scenes about mundane things, trying so hard to be "artsy" and failing every single time. Let me give you a few examples... I would give you a heads up by saying "Warning. Spoilers ahead!", but a spoiler means revealing something about the story, which isn't the case here simply because there is no story. Ok so the examples: him cleaning his shotgun, him cleaning the windshield from something that looks like pigeon poo, him folding a milk carton, him waiting for the coffee machine to finish pouring a cup of coffee and so on. These scenes are long and there are many scenes like these... I mean if one would add up the scenes that are actually meaningful (and I'm very generous by using this word), you would end up with a 15 minute short movie. A bad short movie, but at least it would be honest. So to sum it up there is no story, no character development, no drama whatsoever, there's basically nothing, which is quite fitting for a movie about nothing.

You can find this one for free on Romanian CINEPUB, at that rate, it's well worth a watch. It is classically Romanian cinema in its dry philosophy, we come in, we go out, there's no big epiphany. Ninety minutes flat, who makes 90 minute movies any more, in 2019?

But actually, Stefan's life has been completely turned upside down, when Nic's sudden death forces him to realise, what a deceiver his mate was, how much Nic's conned him, all his life in fact.

Does the director shout this at you? Nope, he almost deliberately looks straight ahead, or looks the other way. Stefan's enlightenment comes to him in slow degrees, in random moments of frustration with his wife, casual remarks from the accountant at work, fooling around with his rifle, oblique reveals from Nic's old friends.

Tonally, mood wise, Romanian cinema seems quite different to most European cinema, maybe the astringent Russian directors are an exception, like the guy who made Leviathan.