Thursday, April 4, 2013

Movies: Beyond The Hills

Cinema gets more and more global. Even the impoverished Romania participates at the international movie market. Last weekend I watched "Beyond the Hills ("Dupa Dealuri" (imdb). The movie is set in Romania, where it was produced and shot. It runs in New York`s IFC theater in Romanian with English subtitles.

The film tells the story of 2 girls, who are bonded by a common childhood in an orphanage. Now they stay in in a remote monastery and have to deal with an austere and bigoted environment which leads into a drama. The movie shows how relationship, religious fundamentalism, mental problems combined with stubbornness could lead to a disaster.

The flick lasts 150 minutes, which is way to long. After around 80 minutes I lost my interest and got tired. The handheld camera which follows the sometimes hectic behavior of the cast makes it worse. Following the tedious and viscous plot and watching the frugal cinematography was tedious. The strong acting by Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur was wasted on a weak production.

I guess Romania as a movie producing country could do better than that.

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