Romania
3.5*
Director:
Cătălin Mitulescu
Screenwriters:
Cătălin Mitulescu
Andreea Valean
Director of Photography:
Marius Panduru
Running time: 110 minutes
Original title: Cum mi-am petrecut sfârşitul lumii
By the end of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s decades-long reign, the ruthless Romanian dictator who had inspired fear in his people was a laughing stock, and while most people showed reverence to him in public, he was the object of ridicule in private.
Director Cătălin Mitulescu’s debut film, one of the gems of the Romanian New Wave, gives us a glimpse of life under the bereted leader who, in a hilarious opening scene, snatches a large block of cheese from a schoolboy because he hasn’t teethed yet. This boy, Lali (short for Lalalilu), should have been the focus of the film. If this were the case, this could easily have been one of the finest films of the Romanian New Wave. The boy is cute and curious with a natural acting ability and none of the contrivances of so many performances by child actors.
But we don’t get him in the lead. Instead, what we are left with is a very patchy storyline involving Eva, Lali’s older sister, who in her final year of high school has to choose between Alex, the slightly rebellious but well-intentioned son of a high-ranking Communist Party official, and Andrei, a boy whose ingenuity makes up for his looks. In one of the best scenes of the film, Alex knocks over a bust of Ceaușescu at his and Eva’s school; when they are both discovered at the scene of the crime, they are expelled and sent to a technical school outside the city.
There are interesting bits of narrative here and there – in particular, the plan hatched by Andrei to escape with Eva across the Danube, and their preparations for this adventure – but often the motivations are not well established, and when it transpires that Andrei and Eva are not on the same page when they find themselves halfway across the river in the middle of the night, the change of heart is left unexplained.
The film offers a nice sketch of the last year of Ceaușescan Romania, where regular power cuts and a general lack of rations are the order of the day, and the political situation is not the focus of the film. Fair enough. But Eva’s character arc is difficult to grasp, while her brother Lali’s adventurous spirit (he even has a plan to assassinate the country’s leader, but his plans fall apart when the revolution arrives) makes for arresting viewing but gets too little coverage. I would have liked a more coherent storyline for Eva, but given he is a first-time director, Mitulescu has staged his film very competently.