Tuesday, After Christmas (Mar i, dup Cr ciun) [DVD]

This film seemed to be following banal lives in an everyday way, but below the surface was suspenseful and dramatic. It masterfully made the ordinary seem interesting. Naturalistic acting by the cast of a very high order. The storytelling was subtle. The film takes no sides, but there's plenty to think about.

Paul is in love with two women, his wife Adriana and his lover Raluca, a younger woman who is their daughter's dentist. Though light in terms of plotting, the film is riveting, each scene revealing more about Paul's state of mind as he prepares to tell his wife the truth.It's a powerful and accomplished piece of work. There's no music. Scenes often unfold in real time using a fixed widescreen camera and without editing. The opening, for example, showing the lovers casually chatting playfully on a bed, lasts over seven minutes without feeling like it. Another early long scene with the main characters in Raluca's surgery crackles with awkwardness. Several times the camera remains on Paul while the person he's talking to is kept off screen, emphasizing his feeling of alienation, such as a scene in which Adriana asks for a foot massage: we see her feet on Paul's lap but at no point are we shown the rest of her.Unlike many films of marital break-up, especially Bergman's, which have a strong theatrical, histrionic element to the proceedings,'Tuesday, After Christmas' is quietly realistic. The scene in which Paul tells Adriana about his six-month affair with Raluca feels 'true to life' and is all the more heart-wrenching for it.This is an immensely watchable film, superbly acted and unfussily directed. The 2.35:1 image is blemish-free. The single 17-minute extra is an interesting informal interview (in English) with the director. In short, another excellent Second Run DVD.

Just the kind of film I was looking for. Wonderful and very finely acted.

A film about relationships with a truthful look at it. Beautiful.

Good film.