Tonight I saw Octav Chelaru's debut feature film, which is based on (or rather is inspired by) a real love story with a tragic ending, which happened some years ago, between a priest's wife and a high school student. The story ended with the suicide of the young man.
I won't narrate the movie here, just a few highlights.
The film has all the characteristics of the low-budget Romanian film, which relies a lot on the psychological mindset of the characters, in order to impress the audience! With all the good and the bad that derives from here!
The film has a good flow, it is not preaching anything and it's quite honest, not forcing the viewer towards limited interpretations.
I still don't know what to say about how believable the characters are presented. Maybe because of my familiarity with the setting, maybe because of the exceptionality of the story.
Dialogues are, most often, natural; sometimes slightly touched by hysteria, as in all Romanian films. Or maybe it's just my feeling...
All in all, it is not an anti-clerical film at all! On the contrary! Beyond some awkwardness, the church, the priesthood, the priest's family are approached very respectfully!
It's a film about wounded and unfulfilled eros, maybe also about a confused past of a woman, maybe incapable of happiness, maybe forced to live a life that didn't make her happy!
But more than that, I think it's about the devastating effect that migration and the lack of family love has on children and teenagers!
The conclusion drawn by me, let's call it "moral conclusion", is that man without love is nothing and tends towards self-destruction. The lack of love places the soul in an entropic desire, which, at best, destroys destinies, and at worst, puts the equal sign between life and death!
I say it's a movie worth seeing!
