Bogdan Mureşanu picks up the first signs of an express revolution between laughter and tears
In December 1989, many of Bucharest’s inhabitants had to cope with rather harsh living conditions, while insistent rumors of a revolt in Timisoara were being violently suppressed. It’s in this gloomy atmosphere, as the festive season approaches, that two teenagers prepare to flee their country, where they see no future for themselves. A stage actress is recruited to sing the praises of the government in an end-of-year variety show, replacing a presenter who left the country the day after the recording and must be erased in a still basic technological context. Elsewhere, an old lady has to resign herself to moving under pressure from property developers into an impersonal apartment. These are three of a half-dozen stories that paint a picture of Romania at the end of a year during which the Berlin Wall collapsed, dragging down whole sections of the Iron Curtain.
Behind its ironic title, The New Year that Never Came paints a half-tinted picture of a society that persists in clinging to its derisory dreams by asking the impossible of Santa Claus, in the image of the little boy who writes him a letter without measuring all the consequences, under a totalitarian regime where suspicion is omnipresent and the Securitate is responsible for monitoring citizens in order to flush out black sheep. It’s a theme that inspired Bogdan Mureşanu’s award-winning short The Christmas Gift (Cadoul de Craciun, 2018). However, the director doesn’t choose to turn it into a sketch today, but rather one of the components of a choral film whose conventions he respects without artifice. The result is a portrait of manners teeming with feelings and disillusionment, with primacy always given to the impulses of the heart, under the omnipresent surveillance of Conducător Nicolae Ceaușescu, who had been in power for almost a quarter of a century. The film’s meticulous attention to detail goes so far as to recreate the monotonous hues of the period, thanks to the combined efforts of cinematographers Boroka Biro and Tudor Platon, who won a special mention in Venice in the Authors under 40 Award, set designers Iulia Negoescu and Victor Fukicea, and costume designer Dana Anghel.
That first feature film by a director in his early fifties shows an uncommon ambition, while deliberately taking on the heritage of the Romanian new wave by sprinkling its group portrait with a healthy dose of itchiness, without ever lapsing into nostalgia or caricature. The tragedy is matched by humor reminiscent of Italian comedy, thanks to an impeccable, cross-generational cast. In this respect, The New Year that Never Came continues a solid tradition of Romanian cinema that stretches from Lucian Pintilie’ The Afternoon of a Torturer (Dupa-amiaza unui tortionar, 2001) to Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mister Lazarescu (Moartea domnului Lazarescu, 2005). Behind the study of manners lies a historical fresco where individual destinies converge in a collective momentum, without the characters ever really realizing that they are quite simply writing the history of their country. The human truth of the film is undoubtedly also due in large part to the fact that its author was a teenager when these events took place and is careful not to sift them for posterity. Its merit lies in reproducing the state of mind of a people who seemed resigned to their fate, and who were led by a crude lie to unite their final forces in a revolt that became an express revolution. The whole thing is set to the crescendo of Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero”, which chants out the gradual build-up of tension, with an effectiveness already proven in Blake Edwards’ Ten (1979) and Claude Lelouch’s Bolero (Les uns et les autres, 1981).
The New Year that Never Came (Anul Nou Car N-A Fost) by Bogdan Mureşanu. With Mihai Calin, Nicoleta Hâncu, Emilia Dobrin, Adrian Văncică, Andrei Miercure, Iulian Postelnicu, Ioana Flora. 138 minutes. International sales: Cercamon
Jean-Philippe Guerand
Edited by Alissa Simon
© FIPRESCI 2024