alexandru-acsinte

I found this to be a wonderful and beautiful look at rebelliousness and cries of the youth in a post-communist Romania. A world constantly influenced by American pop-music and cool American words heard on TV such as "piece of sh*t", or "son of a bitch".

It's a world in which Mitu strives for a better life and wishes to detach himself from the dependency on his family, especially his father's relations. After falling in love with Norica, a girl who seems to get him, he sets on marrying her and fleeing to America, where they shall meet Paradise.

Set on doing things his way, Mitu disobeys his superiors several times without caring for the repercussions. All he knows is that he wants Norica and he wants to reach America's shores. He is envious of his brother Nicu, whom their father has helped get away from the hardships found in Romania. But Nicu's life in America is not the wonderland that Mitu imagines it to be, as he has to eat from celebrities' trash bins and sleep on the streets. And I like how matters are not as black-and-white as Mitu believes them to be.

I thought that most of the performances were really great, with the exceptions with a few ones which I found to be questionable. Many of the shots of the landscape have a dream-like quality to them and made me think that in spite of the fact that people are just like pigs (as Mitu puts it), perhaps, just perhaps, Paradise may not be across the ocean in the America, but right there, in your own land.