Romanians have made a handful of exceptional and quality films in the last twenty years, and the shocking and shocking hyperrealistic drama by Calin Peter Netzer certainly belongs to the very top. “Pozitica copilului” or “Child’s Pose” is perhaps my favorite and best film in the sea of great films from Romania’s new wave, and it is equally an impressive social critique as a character study that deservedly won all the awards in the selection for best Romanian film. years. And not only that, “Child’s Pose” won the Golden Bear or the main prize at the festival in Berlin, he was also a Romanian Oscar nominee (ingenuity and a miracle without a nomination), and the amazing Luminta Gheorghiu was nominated for Best European Actress of the Year .
Gheorghiu is Cornelia Keneres, a rich and successful architect, she is part of the social elite and she gave her son Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache) all the privileges that children of the rich usually have in such transitional societies. Already in the introductory scenes, it is clear to us that the world is theirs and that she did very well in the swamp of the post-Ceausescu era, and she subordinated everything to success and maintaining her position. But even though she is convinced that she has made everything possible for her son, he doesn’t really want to have too much to do with her, and he acted like a typical representative of the transitional golden youth. It is as if Barba is the son of an HDZ powerful man from our region who can do whatever he wants and, thanks to the influence of his parents, gets out of all the shit he gets into. However, this time Barbu got into too much shit because he was driving too fast drunk and ran over a child in a poor suburb of Bucharest.
When she finds out what happened, Cornelia will do anything to save her son, who faces up to years in prison. She will try to pull off all possible ties, bribe whoever she can, she will even go to visit the family of the boy her son killed, and in the meantime she will realize that she too has lost her son. And a long time ago because Barbu despises her, and with the awakening of a protective maternal instinct, he will realize that she made her son the man he is today. At the same time, although it is obvious that her son is guilty, she is convinced that Barbu is innocent and will do everything to get him out of trouble, although even Barbu as time passes becomes more aware of what he did and that nothing should and should release from liability. Many famous Romanian actors appear here in episodic roles, but this disturbing and shocking drama, which provokes anger and resentment in the audience, is still carried by the miraculous Gheorghiu.
The role of Cornelia is one of the best roles in the film in the last ten years without a doubt, and although we realize that this is a person despised, everything she does here, she does out of love for her son. It’s the kind of love that only a mother can feel for her child, and Nezer, who co-wrote the much better-known Razvan Radulescu (equally impressive “Mr. Lazarescu’s Death”), created her character because they don’t judge her. Cornelia is as she is, it is clear to all of us that she is a typical product of post-transitional capitalism in which identical opportunists have emerged, perverts who see only themselves and their own, but we see and understand her here primarily as a mother. As a physically petite and fragile woman in her sixties who smokes one cigarette after another, but at the same time a woman of incredible, even terrifying energy who does not accept no as an answer.
Like the vast majority of films made in Romania in recent years, “Pozitia copilului” is also a film about a stratified society after the fall of communism and worlds that have almost no contact. Until some catastrophic situation like this happens and when people like Cornelia, by force of circumstances, have to travel among those with whom they have nothing in common. And those final scenes in which she is in the company of her son and his wife, a woman she despises and can’t stand and thinks she’s to blame for all of Barbu’s problems, are especially impressive. Only then does it become clear to us that Cornelia actually has no sympathy or consideration for people who have lost a child, but is only interested in how to get some benefits for her prodigal son.
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