The film opens with an adulterous couple, Paul and Raluca, naked in bed.  Then we see Paul, a married man, doing ordinary domestic things with his wife and daughter.  Afterwards there is an increase in silent pain and silent stress, followed by . . . nothing good.

Tuesday, After Christmas (2011) is a deeply sophisticated and realistic Romanian movie about marital infidelity.  Its characters live for the love of an adult, for amatory love; and the new adult for Paul, Raluca, is a trade-up to replace good wife Adriana (go figure).   The film reveals the easy destruction which immorality brings about, and the frequent quietness with which people introduce disaster to a particular sphere.

It’s a subdued work directed by Radu Muntean, who uses no music to speak of and a myriad of medium shots in long takes.  As for the acting, Mimi Branescu (Paul) is perfectly true as a middle-class man who is ordinary but not boring and hardly without moral awareness.  Marie Popistau (Raluca) supplies subtlety and nimbleness as a dentist-cum-mistress.  Exquisitely Mirela Opriser gets everything right as Adriana, a conventional woman suddenly thrust into anguish and rage.

By the way, what negative criticism this fine film received was sadly stupid.

(In Romanian with English subtitles)

Tuesday, After Christmas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most of today’s screen musicals deserve to be left alone.  They’re not even as satisfying as the music video for Michael Buble‘s “Haven’t Met You Yet” (2009), a song-and-dance mini-musical in which a lovelorn Michael enters a supermarket and meets his future wife-actual wife, Luisana Lopilato.  Employees and customers alike become hoofers, and, well, people in the store somehow multiply, dancing admirably to a delectable pop song.  Michael has met his one and only, and yet in this fluffy “video” it’s just a fantasy.

Although it differs much from the Buble routine, the music video for the Evanescence song, “Call Me When You’re Sober,” is another happy-making effort better than most contemporary musicals.  Gothic and garish, it proffers red capes, candles, wolves, and a great rock ditty sung by Amy Lee.  There are dancing creeps—I don’t know what else to call them—surrounding Amy before she rises into the air; and then the creeps rise into the air and start twirling.  The song is better than the visuals, but the whole thing is weird fun.  It’s rather cheap, but less so than much of Moulin Rouge. 

Once again in a Western, bloody conflict revolves around cattle theft, albeit the 1957 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, serving up the stuff of (mere) legend, also forces Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster) to contend with cold Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas) before seeking the killer’s help.

It’s a world of stouthearted men disinclined to talk too much, gutsy toughs who walk away without responding to somebody’s utterance.  Directed by John Sturges, the film is not quite tidy enough:  it lets unattached Earp lose Rhonda Fleming—I mean Laura, whom Fleming plays—almost as an afterthought.  In addition, one ought to object that insufficient sympathy is shown for Kate Fisher (Jo Van Fleet), the harsh Holliday’s mistreated lady-friend.  All the same, there is an attractive look, decent dialogue and enjoyable action.  And the early tension between Earp and Holliday is so interesting it alone makes the movie watchable.

The full title of Scott Seward Smith‘s debut novel is Red Line Blues: The Passion of Owen Cassell, Closet Conservative (2018).  Close to middle age, Owen Cassell is divorced from Lisa, drinks heavily, and eventually has sex—with one woman, Audrey.  That he is a closet conservative (and Republican) certainly matters inasmuch as Audrey is a callow liberal and would be bothered by any boyfriend hiding his political outlook from her.

Smith gives only so much space to the subject of this relationship, focusing as he does on Owen’s connection (as speechwriter) to Mitt Romney, the life and doings of his grandfather, and other things.  But it is all too bad that happiness through being loved must remain at bay.  We are meant to believe, I think, that Owen should not be the coward he is, and that Audrey should not dismiss a man because of his political outlook.  This, however, is, or may be, “the popular current,” to use Alexander Hamilton’s words.

There is no fluid prose in Red Line Blues but it is ably written.  It’s straightforward.  It harbors a good attitude toward America, wherein, in fact, Owen is not a ruined man.  Smith writes that “everything to him [Owen] seemed renewable, like the very spirit of America itself.”  That Smith respects the spirit of America is one reason this is one of the most mature novels I’ve read.

I wasn’t sure Tom Perrotta‘s Mrs. Fletcher was a novel that would speak to me and so I discontinued reading it.  I may also discontinue watching the HBO TV series, Mrs. Fletcher—Perrotta-created—if I find it a letdown.  Judging from the first, late-October episode, it might not be.

Director Nicole Holofcener and scenarist Perrotta do crisp, bright work here, and the 30-minute episode is very effective at depicting something in particular:  a teen boy (Jackson White) who, because he is callow, fails to appreciate the mother (Kathryn Hahn) who helps him move into his college dorm room.  Hahn, as Mrs. Fletcher, knows how to do uneasiness and discomfort, and is never unsubtle.  I want to see more of her.  I hope Perrotta maintains his smarts.