Capturing the dynamics that unfold within a family is a challenge – how can you elicit truth from people when they are being filmed? Or rather, how do you capture the moments without them censoring themselves? Particularly when they are less than flattering. Being a part of it all helps, which is why Eugene Buică’s documentary, sprawling over many years, but focusing on episodic moments, gets under your skin so well. It’s funny, it’s grim and it’s utterly sad – is what the blurb should say.
We first meet Mr. and Mrs. Buică in 1998, as they return to Romania from their adoptive home in the United States. The occasion is the wedding of one of their sons, George, while the other, Eugene, documents the event. It doesn’t take long for the jabs between spouses to go from playful to toxic, as the wife casually confronts her husband over his purported numerous infidelities, while the husband swats them away as womanly exaggerations. It’s a pattern that repeats itself throughout the movie, even as years go by, and some scenes are light and breezy and empathetic, while others are daunting to watch.
The film has an improvised feel for the most part, with handheld recordings placing the viewer right in the room with the protagonists. There are also a couple of structured interviews, which change the pace of the exploration to a kind of trial by accusations, and build towards the inevitable sad finale which coincides with the passing of the parents.
It’s a story rich in the texture of human nature, which makes it difficult to frame morally. Yes, Mr. Buică is not easy to root for, acting like a self-absorbed pragmatist, denying fault or responsibility for the most part, whether it is for his sexual waywardness or his occasional violence. But even Mrs. Buică, in her indomitable spirit, is tough to handle, her energy overflowing into many jabs and taunts and straight-out accusations against her husband. How and why do two people so terribly mismatched stay together for so long? The answers are never satisfying for an outsider. In it all, in the to and fro, there is an undeniable energy that makes you feel alive, even if it is a life of turmoil.
I liked how there is so much going on beyond the overt commentary from the protagonists. It’s also not particularly clean or smooth, the way family discord appears in fiction movies (or The Bear). If anything, the experience is closer to watching fallout during the evening news, it has that rawness to it, while benefiting from not having to pigeonhole itself into making a particular kind of commentary. It’s being pulled in several directions, whether through Mr. Buică, Mrs. Buică or Eugene, with the latter swaying between documentarian and son – while definitely veering more towards the latter. There are generational aspects to it as well, the perpetuation of dysfunction and trauma, though these don’t get explored quite as much.
Ultimately, the ambiguity of being a flawed human specimen shines through Mrs. Buică (the movie). And the fragmentation of the soul is bared through Mrs. Buică (the protagonist). The movie embraces it all, sometimes coming uncomfortably close to a kind of interpersonal exploitation, but it is between these lines of what is acceptable and what is uncomfortable that Eugene Buică’s family tale makes its stand. 8
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