Marţi, după Crăciun (2010): I came across this surprising suggestion on Metacritic’s best Holiday movies of the century list. Last year, I watched Radu Muntean’s Întregalde (2021) and liked it, so I had to see what this one was about. Starring Mimi Brănescu, Maria Popistaşu (again) and Mirela Oprişor, it’s your typical Christmas movie. That is, if your typical Christmas movie includes adultery and heartbreak. Coming from the wave of Romanian realist movies of fifteen years ago, this plays out without much fanfare. It emphasizes the harsh realities facing people who embark on such romantic entanglements and captures the sense of guilt-ridden joy that usually comes with them. To all extents and purposes, it is a movie littered with pragmatists, whose emotions rarely get the best of them. The two female leads are admirable, both showing stoicism and vulnerability without undermining their agency. Capturing the dying moments of a certain kind of life, Marti, după Crăciun (Tuesday, After Christmas) feels suspended in time, the way life-changing choices appear as they transition towards unalterable reality. 8
White Reindeer (2013): Staying with the theme of atypical Christmas movies, I picked another one off Metacritic’s list. Zach Clark’s film is about a seemingly well-functioning couple that gets torn apart, leaving the wife, Suzanne (Anna Margaret Hollyman) to reexamine her life. It’s a Christmas movie in spirit, generous to its characters, but not in style or feeling. Everyone is trying to make “it” work as best they can and this includes some non-standard life choices. The movie leaves strings untied, giving the sense of being an observational slice of life. That’s in the way many of us are in regards to others, where we drift in and out of their day to days. I thought it was engaging and unique enough to warrant its watch. 7
Fern Brady: Autistic Bikini Queen (2024): Sorry to be keeping at these stand-ups, but it’s what there has been emotional capacity for these weeks. I caught a clip of Fern Brady on Facebook, of all places, and thought her deprecating humour worked well. Looking into her career and her background made me curious about her book, on how autism forms and fits in her worldview as a (female) comedian. This show touches on that, which sets it apart from some of the other fares around Netflix. But it’s not because of this otherness that Brady’s work is funny. It’s just well executed material from a talented performer. 7
I Used to be Funny (2023): Rachel Sennott shines in this difficult and tonally scattershot movie about loss, abuse and where the two intersect and overlap. Additionally, first time director (well, as far as features go)/writer Ally Pankiw chooses an ill-fitting time jumbling structure to generate tension, but also undermine the movie’s tone. That said, I think this is a pretty good effort, with some moments of levity emphasizing the dire situation that its characters find themselves in. 7
Today Again (2023): I thought the genre of teenage romcom-cum-tragedy-by-degenerative-disease was tapped out, but it seems there one can always resort to localization to further explore it. This Italian flick has its cuteness and benefits from an overall lively look, gorgeous Italian vistas and an agreeable group of actors. It tries to hard though to replicate tropes and adhere to formula, which is fine enough while it stays light, but as soon as it takes its dark turn into tragedy, it loses momentum. I really don’t know what the point of this kind of teenage-debilitation-porn is, because even if decently acted, like here, the melodrama is just so thick you get no aria. It’s a shame, because as I said, this isn’t a movie without any charm, but overall I would say that it fails more than it succeeds. 4
tributary stu 