Alina Grigore, who co-wrote and starred in Adrian Sitaru’s film about incestuous love, Illegitimate, bursts on the scene of new Romanian cinema as a director to watch with her rambunctiously offbeat first feature Blue Moon (Crai nou). Stuck in the middle of an extended family of rural hicks who exploit her intelligence, college-age Irina begs and schemes to go to university in Bucharest, but does she have the gumption to escape? A faint trace of black humor lightens the general gloom of this chaotic tale of family-as-jailer, and Ioana Chitu’s deep-diving lead performance gives insight into the mind of a young woman brow-beaten by men. Its bow in San Sebastian competition is bound to bring Grigore more festival attention, but the story’s unpleasant premises and the fact it’s not easy to narratively decipher may handicap its chances with wider audiences.
We are thrown into Irina’s inner turmoil from the get-go, when her annoying sister Viki (Ilinca Neacsu) rudely awakens her to go to town with their cousin Liviu (Mircea Postelnicu from Ana, My Love). In her cropped blue hair and modern fashions, Viki is an uninhibited wild woman who vocally tries to embarrass the family whenever she can, especially in the presence of strangers. (Liviu, on the other hand, refers to the sisters as “runts” and it’s not at all endearing.)
Most of the action takes place at the family guest house in the hills, generously described by one disgusted character as an eyesore that required deforesting two mountains to build. As tourist season approaches, Irina has been conscripted into becoming the family’s accountant. Liviu, to his shame, is illiterate and his math skills are woefully inadequate, as we see in a painful scene in which he tries to correct a big mistake he made billing a client.
Grigore’s screenplay often seems too busy creating a discordant atmosphere to clear up relationships, and it can be a chore figuring out who’s who, plunging the viewer into some of the nervous uncertainty onscreen. But it’s soon clear that the romantic-looking Liviu is a domestic monster. His violent possessiveness and urge to control Irina and Viki seem positively medieval, if not a sign of sexual repression. When he believes Viki is having an affair and may be pregnant, he crosses the line, and his anti-Semitic comments further alienate him from our affections.
But the worst is a business deal he’s trying to arrange for his older brother Sergiu (Mircea Silaghi) who heads the family in the absence of their distant father. They are looking for a baby to sell to a couple, and any baby will do. Strangely, this plot point ends up disappearing from the story, like several others that leave the viewer wondering.
At this stage Irina, slovenly dressed and uncombed, is a passive-aggressive observer who contents herself with not helping her pushy cousin Liviu. Her simple ploy of remaining in stony silence and not answering his torrent of invasive questions creates tons of tension. At the same time, her efforts to go to Bucharest fall on deaf ears in the self-interested family. One hears the Chekovian echoes of “To Moscow!” (which here becomes, a little comically, “To Bucharest!”) in the dissatisfied sisters, who hang around the house out of inertia, captives to their male relatives’ tempers.
The acting is vivid if eccentric and the emotional responses are quite realistic, even if we don’t fully understand the circumstances. This strategy works beautifully when Irina goes to a party, is drugged and blacks out. When she wakes up the next morning she realizes she’s lost her virginity but doesn’t remember how it happened. Someone recalls she left the party with Tudor. She asks, “Who’s Tudor?”
An ugly situation in an uglier family would be hard to find, but surprisingly Irina turns it around, making a lover out of her rapist in the hope he’ll help her get to Bucharest. It’s a relationship that satisfies neither of them. Chitu is fascinating in her approach to this difficult role. Seething inside, she retreats farther into herself, beating rhythmically and obsessively on a board hanging outside, and Grigore repeats the scene until her inner tension spreads to the viewer.
Adrian Paduretu’s cinematography works in perfect symbiosis with the ensemble acting, following the characters with their same nervous frustration, or blurring the image to mimic someone so angry she can’t see where she’s going.
Director, screenwriter: Alina Grigore
Cast: Ioana Chitu, Mircea Postelnicu, Mircea Silaghi, Vlad Ivanov, Emil Mandanac, Ilinca Neacsu, Ioana Flora, Robi Urs, Mihaela Perianu
Producers: Robi Urs, Gabi Suciu
Cinematography: Adrian Paduretu
Production design: Anastasia Ionescu
Edting: Mircea Olteanu, Costu Zaharia
Music: Subcarpati
Sound design: Ioan Filip
Production companies: InLight Films (Romania) in coproduction with Atelier de Film, Forest Film, Unfortunate Thespians, Smart Sound Studios, Avanpost
World sales: Patra Spanou
Venue: San Sebastian Film Festival (competition)
84 minutes
