Trecatoarele iubiri

the presence of Beate Fredanov in a special role. bitter love story. slices of Bucharest. white dialogues. the mark of Malvina Urșianu. twilight of emotions and sentiments and last wishes. delicate poetry of search of happiness. and great actors who transforms the air in velvet ash walls. nostalgic music and force of silence. a film who defines the spirit of a period. the political command. the ambiguous expression of will. the meeting with the past. the fight for impose the fundamental note of life. beautiful and cold. exercise to translate the pieces of universe of an admirable director. and her actors. the ash poetry is heart of "Trecătoarele iubiri". special tool for understand the profound sensibility who grow up in each scene. and for discover the desire to serve the truth.

I must admit I found it quite odd in the beginning - the dialogue seems awkward, rather theatrical, and the actors seemed to move clumsily around the camera (or vice versa). But the final impression is that of genuine quality romance, a simple and noble story well told, no unnecessary words or scenes, everything falling into place, like the pieces in a puzzle, all of them glued together by the director's sensitivity and insight - actually, all of Malvina Ursianu's films that I've seen (unfortunately, there aren't many of them) made a strong impression on me. The story, as I said, is a simple one: Andrei (played by George Motoi), an architect, returns from Germany to Romania (at a time when emigration was strongly discouraged by the Romanian state) with his half-German wife Hanna (played by Gina Patrichi) on a business trip, to find his ex-love Lena (played by Silvia Popovici) married to his ex-best friend Costea (played by Cornel Coman). As they meet, Andrei realizes he still loves Lena and cares for Costea, even if the latter thinks his coming back is an intrusion upon their lives ("I thought all my friends have died./Your friends, maybe. The rest of us get along fine.") - his marriage with Lena doesn't seem to go anywhere, they're both architects and both have a busy schedule, so they're more like companions than a couple. What no one suspects is that Andrei has come home to die - he is suffering from lung cancer and it won't take long (as he comes back to his native place, he finds the old house deserted and the whole village moved on the mountain-side in order to build a dam - the scene is breath-taking, and the exquisite music has an important part in it - you get the feeling of emptiness that somehow suggests what is going to happen). Although he has longed for Lena - without knowing it - it is now clear to him he must let her go. In fact, he must let go of everything, and he lets his wife go back without him ("You're not the kind of person who needs anyone's support."), soon before writing a superb farewell letter to Lena ("But never mind. As we grow old, we'll remember these things less and less, until our grandchildren will look on them as mere atavisms."). I don't want (and I can't) to disclose any further details, the golden autumn atmosphere, the sense of a quiet, peaceful end, the sub-plots and the symbolical characters appearing along - you'll have to wait for some time to watch it on a Romanian channel (as far as I know, there's no DVD copy of it).

it is special. for atmosphere, music by Tiberiu Olah, the mark of Malvina Urșianu universe, acting. and, for the performance of Beate Fredanov in a extraordinary role, an old lady, in original form of script from Russia, after censor intervention, from Bretagne , short reflection of story essence. her presence is touching not only for the symbolic confession but for the fact than it is first role from a short actress career of this theater teacher. the film can be a love story, a self definition in deep crisis period of a man, image of return to roots and time passing and the present as isle, too far to be peninsula of past, too short to suppose a future. at first sigh, it can be one of a direction for Romanian cinema. a form of self definition of director, exercise to avoid the propaganda pressure. a film about need of the other and truth coldness, about last way and new silhouette of Ulissses, it is one of touching demonstration of force, sensitivity and use of delicate nuances from an original director and her manner to define reality as clay for art.