Romanian film review – Sundays on Leave & More to Watch

The countdown is on for Romania’s biggest film festival, Transilvania International Film Festival (in short, TIFF). Until it kicks off on June 9, here are a few suggestions to pass the time.

Bogdan Mirică’s thriller Boss is currently in cinemas, as is Nae Caranfil’s restored È pericoloso sporgersi. The former is a recent release and an OK time at the movies, especially if you have a soft spot for Bucharest on film. The latter has quite the history. Initially launched in 1993, it also launched its (then) young director’s career, one which includes the 1996 road-movie comedy Asphalt Tango (helped immensely by featuring the fabulous Charlotte Rampling) and the much-quoted Filantropica(2002), also a comedy, this time featuring a mob of beggars (sounds terrible, I know, but so were the early 2000s, a chaotic, anything-goes and laugh-at-it-all time, all horror and wonder at the same time). Caranfil never managed to capture the feeling of the times and reach the level of pure fun (and occasional sophistication) with his later, more ‘serious-minded’ features, and to this day, this triptych of likable, humanist comedies are universally beloved. Bearing the English-language title Sundays on Leave, the pic has a (deceptively) simple plot: when an acting company stops in the sleepy town and the main actor, a middle-aged lothario, meets a self-assured high-school student, matters are complicated further by the boyfriend she is dating platonically, a young soldier who is in love with her. The film looks at the characters’ adventures with infectious lightness while doing a brilliant job at capturing the atmosphere of the late 1980s shortly before the fall of Communism. The humour ranges between innocent and vulgar, the characters are a bit of a cliché, but the overall sweetness and energy make it impossible to dislike, especially as a piece of nostalgia. Sundays on Leave was a phenomenon when it premiered, a new, fresh and exciting breath of fresh air in the murky 1990s, not just compared to the films of the communist era but mostly to the ones being made at that time. Exhilarated by the sudden emergence of the freedom of speech, many were average, hysterical and gratuitously foul-mouthed while others were ambitious but somber. Caranfil managed to hit the right balance and tone. By the way, the saying “è pericoloso sporgersi” should be familiar to everyone who traveled by train in communist and post-communist Romania (at least until they started replacing the good old trains) and is Italian for “don’t lean out of the window”.