Love Building

Love Building (2013) was directed by Iulia Rugina. It's a quirky, unusual film that is a romantic comedy involving many couples. (Sort of like "Love, Actually," but much, much better.)

The movie has a unique history. The three lead actors run a private acting school in Bucharest. The course lasts four months. This particular class had about 30 students enrolled in it. After the course was over, the course directors hired a film director, and offered every student a chance to be in a movie. They shot the movie over a four-week period, with a budget of € 50,000. (€50,000 is very little, even by Romanian standards.)

The basic plot is that the three leads are therapists--sort of--who teach at a camp designed to heal damaged love relationships. The students play the people who sign up for the course.

The script writers were excellent--the dialog sounds natural and unforced. The acting was even more impressive--the acting school must know how to teach what actors need to know. There wasn't a weak performance in the film.

This is definitely a movie worth watching. Seek it out if it gets wider distribution. It will work well on the small screen.

We saw the movie at its U.S. Premiere as part of the excellent series, "Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema" at The Film Society of Lincoln Center in Manhattan.