Often, when embarking on the recent Variety tradition that is this feature — designed to highlight some of the year’s best yet least-Oscar-likely performances — one particular turn will emerge as the poster child. A performance that, for many reasons, really ought to have a shot at Oscar but, being in a language other than English, has little chance. This year, that slot goes to Vicky Krieps who, in Marie Kreutzer’s “Corsage,” does not so much play Empress Elisabeth of Austria (a role previously defined by Romy Schneider in the saccharine “Sissi” trilogy) as entirely reimagine and reclaim her.
Rather like with Mads Mikkelsen in Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round,” Krieps has the kind of stateside profile that will help “Corsage” stay in the conversation for the best international feature film Oscar shortlist. But the odds of her getting an individual best actress nod remain far slimmer — a shame, given...
Rather like with Mads Mikkelsen in Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round,” Krieps has the kind of stateside profile that will help “Corsage” stay in the conversation for the best international feature film Oscar shortlist. But the odds of her getting an individual best actress nod remain far slimmer — a shame, given...
- 12/16/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Fresh off winning the award for best director in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar, Alexandru Belc returns to his native Romania with “Metronom,” which will receive an open-air screening in the historic Piata Unirii (Unity Square) at the Transilvania Film Festival.
A coming-of-age story about a young woman grown disillusioned with her first love, the ‘70s-set period drama reflects the difficult choices Romanians were forced to make under communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, whose gradual clampdown on civil liberties led to a wider unraveling of the social fabric. Variety’s Jessica Kiang wrote that Belc’s incisive feature deftly explores “how insidiously even the young – those most inclined toward rebellion and optimistic self-expression in any society – can be made to fall in step with authoritarianism’s joyless, frogmarching beat.”
Though “Metronom” marks his fiction feature directorial debut, Belc cut his teeth as a script supervisor and assistant...
A coming-of-age story about a young woman grown disillusioned with her first love, the ‘70s-set period drama reflects the difficult choices Romanians were forced to make under communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, whose gradual clampdown on civil liberties led to a wider unraveling of the social fabric. Variety’s Jessica Kiang wrote that Belc’s incisive feature deftly explores “how insidiously even the young – those most inclined toward rebellion and optimistic self-expression in any society – can be made to fall in step with authoritarianism’s joyless, frogmarching beat.”
Though “Metronom” marks his fiction feature directorial debut, Belc cut his teeth as a script supervisor and assistant...
- 6/15/2022
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
The shadow of the Ceaucescu dictatorship hangs over this coming-of-age tale from Romania adding a dark dimension to more familiar themes. It’s nearly time for the exams and, like teenagers everywhere, this group of youngsters in Seventies Bucharest are navigating first love and parental rules, while also gathering together when they can. The difference is that the sheer act of tuning in to the show Metronom 72 on the clandestine Radio Free Europe, which plays western acts like The Doors, is an act of lawbreaking - and that’s before you get to the request letter they are trying to smuggle out of the country.
Alexandru Belcu shows how small acts and emotions are amplified in an environment of oppression and surveillance. Going to a mate’s house to listen to music and coming home by 8pm sounds like a positively tame ambition for teenager Ana (Mara Bugarin) but the reaction of her.
Alexandru Belcu shows how small acts and emotions are amplified in an environment of oppression and surveillance. Going to a mate’s house to listen to music and coming home by 8pm sounds like a positively tame ambition for teenager Ana (Mara Bugarin) but the reaction of her.
- 6/5/2022
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
It is 1972, in Bucharest. Ceaușescu has been in power for seven years, and the fabric of ordinary life has been steeped long enough in his regime’s corrosively oppressive mandate that it has begun to fray. Yet against this backdrop of gathering gloom, bright, fresh first love is blossoming. This is already a fertile setup for an atmospheric, doomed romance, but Alexandru Belc’s slow, stylish, richly imagined feature debut is much more than a Romanian riff on Romeo and Juliet. A metronome keeps time for musicians; “Metronom” describes how insidiously even the young — those most inclined toward rebellion and optimistic self-expression in any society — can be made to fall in step with authoritarianism’s joyless, frogmarching beat.
With this story of individual relationships stressed by systemic fearmongering, writer-director Belc — who previously worked with Cristian Mungiu and Corneliu Porumboiu, and picked up the directing award in this year’s Un...
With this story of individual relationships stressed by systemic fearmongering, writer-director Belc — who previously worked with Cristian Mungiu and Corneliu Porumboiu, and picked up the directing award in this year’s Un...
- 5/30/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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