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Love and friendship. Love versus friendship. Which one is stronger, which one is deeper?

The recipe of the film works well for two of the main leads

Incompleteness is an important theme to Ana Lungu&#39;s feature, a &#39;story&#39; about three friends cohabiting with one another, featuring a selection of scenes from their lives. The ever so slight narrative circles around Iris, who is dealing with the sudden death of her boyfriend and looking to fill the void. The boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred by the fact that the actors play themselves as characters. This generates a certain &#39;meta&#39; feeling, particularly when it is actually discussed within the movie, but abstractly. A lot of the script plays as improvised, with unpolished dialogue and awkward silence abounding. Unfortunately, this loose approach didn&#39;t work too well for me. The air of detachment surrounding Iris, the lead and also co-writer of the movie, sets her character somewhere in the distance, too far to be touched and emoted with. As a result, the movie failed to pull me in, playing as an almost random sequence of events with neutral people talking as people often do, boasting an aimless sense of philosophical enrichment. It might capture the particular joys and tribulations of actors, featuring nods and references to the likes of Mike Leigh and Daphne du Maurier, but what it succeeds at is framing them as people, in all their/our mundane glory. The beautiful cinematography partly makes up for the lack of thrills or the incisiveness of its introspections. It is, however, not enough to make for a recommendation.

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One and a Half Prince

The film is led by a trio out of whom only Istvan Teglas and Marius Manole really work on screen as intended. They are full characters, their interactions feel real and believable, and they have a lot of warmth and humour. Maybe this is who they are as people, considering the meta aspect of this film where the characters resemble their real counterparts. But Iris is really difficult to watch. She blabbers a lot of nonsense and she is reckless with no good reason. I understand this is how this character is supposed to be so maybe the actress is doing a good job but, considering how she plays the character with most screen time, it makes the movie really unappealing at times. Other than that, the side stories the movie tells are compelling to watch and the adventures of the trio are a delight indeed.

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One and a Half Prince

One and a Half Movie

The recipe of the film works well for two of the main leads

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