The guide on this path, accompanying the viewer from the first to the last frames, will be the elderly Viorel - the main character of the film, played by Christie Puyu himself. Digging into the fragments of his daily life, you can find many interesting things. For example, Viorel is in the process of making repairs – perhaps he is preparing to turn a page in his life. Or watching someone, looking out from behind the trailer - perhaps the connection with the old life still disturbs the constant in its tense coldness of the hero. Operator leads will tell here much more than meager dialogues.
But they'll tell someone who's slow to find out whose wife is here, why Viorel only calls her by her first name when talking about his mother, and why he finally needs this 12mm weapon.
In addition to the manifesto of camera objectivity and subjectivity of verbal explanations, Puyu’s approach is also designed to reveal the main character. It is unlikely that such a directing would be successful in the case of a respectable and cheerful guy who calls his mother every day to say “Mom, I love you.”
Of course, Viorel is not. He's up to something, and in these painful plans, the ulterior motives, this suppressed main thing is Puyu's directorial find. Coldly rejecting every uninvited person, Viorel once again convinces us of the presence of these invisible motives, silenced until the last moment. As if catching silhouettes in the predawn twilight, the camera slowly tries to break into the darkness of one lost soul.
9 out of 10
Original