“Romanians can’t make a bad film. It’s, like, illegal in their country. Or at least not in their DNA.”

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stiu romania se prabuseste, dar macar sa ne scufundam zimbind ca – uite – unul de-al nostru ridica usor capul din noroi si straluceste.
filmul lui radu muntean – marti, dupa craciun – a fost vizionat astazi la cannes si cronicarii straini au inceput sa scrie. de foarte bine.

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This year the streak continues — and perhaps gets even stronger — with “Tuesday, After Christmas,” an infidelity drama from a director named Radu Muntean who’s been here several times before. We caught his new movie, in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, at its Thursday press screening and were close to blown away. Muntean’s movie is a remarkable, pitch-perfect work, as convincing and affecting a portrayal of the subtleties of modern life and marriage as you’ll find on the screen.
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No U.S. distributor has yet bought this movie (or the other, equally promising Romanian film here, “Aurora,” from the same director as “Mr. Lazarescu”). While “Tuesday, After Christmas’ ” subject manner and style are eminently accessible to an American audience (it helps that, unlike a lot of the new Romanian cinema, this one is set not in the 1980s Communist period but the modern one, in a decidedly middle-class milieu; Romanian film characters have moved up in the world), we fear that the rocky commercial market for these kinds of dramas will scare off buyers. It won’t matter. The Romanians will keep making great movies, whether or not we turn out to see them.

— Steven Zeitchik – Los Angeles Times, reporting from Cannes, France

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