Second of the two films I've seen from this years Romanian Film Festival is a low key slice of life.
The film takes place over roughly 24 hours as a harried father tries to get business done and his family together so they can take a trip to the shore on vacation. Beginning with a trip to a house he's having built, he then heads on to the home of his ex-wife where he is to pick up his teenage son. Of course nothing goes exactly as planned, his son is shagged out after an all night party, his infant son is sick and the day is punctuated by a client of his print shop who is insisting on their brochure being a certain way, despite obvious problems.
The film is a extremely well acted, especially by Vlad Ivanov as out "hero". Its a good looking film that finds humor in situations that many of us find ourselves in these days, constant digressions and frustrations because cellphones make us instantly contactable no matter where we are. The laughs are frequent and small scale thanks to a naturalness to the humor, which come easily from the situations.
I like the film, but I'm not in love with it. The problem for me is that other than being a slice of life I don't see the point. Why are we seeing this? I'm not sure. Even with a final explosion of frustrated violence and the "happy" family in the car, the film doesn't seem to have a point with the pay off being more added on to provide a climax.
Its not a bad film, not by a long shot, I'm just not sure why the film was picked as being something to hold out at a film festival, or rather something to make a special trip to see at a film festival as the only film you were seeing. If you can manage to get to one of the films screening on either side of it on Friday I'd say go for it, but I'm guessing as stand alone you maybe disappointed.
Worth a look when it hits DVD or Netflix.
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