Tuesday After Christmas
Directed By: Radu Muntean
Written By: Alexandru Baciu, Radu Muntean, and Razvan Radulescu
Starring: Mimi Branescu, Maria Popistasu, and Mierela Oprisor
Director of Photography: Tudor Lucaciu, Editor: Alma Cazacu
Rated: Not Rated, but some nudity
In the latest film from the Romanian New Wave, that ever-prevalent cinema from East Europe that has brought us gem after gem, we get a little morality tale. The story is simple. Paul is middle-aged and living a pretty typical life, except that when we first meet him, he is with a younger woman named Raluca instead of his wife. Director Radu Muntean lets us watch them in their post-coital moments, joking and laughing, with some kisses and physicality, as we see what attracts these people. Instead of giving us their first moment when they locked eyes, or perhaps their intense love-making, we instead see this smaller moment, which plays in real time in a single, maybe 10 minute shot. What Mr. Muntean is able to do is allow us to really understand what drives these two people toward each other, which is what Tuesday After Christmas is all about.
I had the privilege of seeing Mr. Muntean’s last film, Boogie, a few years back. The film never ran theatrically in the United States, and the version I saw was without subtitles, but it demonstrated another story of a man in a mid-life crisis, and effectively did it through the camera and visual playfulness instead of relying on the dialogue, which I couldn’t understand a single word. Tuesday After Christmas is another work of minimalist genius by the Romanian filmmaker, a taut but often subtle work on the little things that keep us going in our relationships, and how fragile those can be.
