Alice T. (2018) User Reviews

A painful symbiosis between a mother and her daughter

[FrenchEddieFelson · 6/10 · 5 May 2019]

In bulk, Alice T. is ungrateful, insolent, rebellious, lying, idle, carefree, selfish, manipulative, ... Like a basic teen certainly but power 10, like a teen boosted to the extreme. Thus, Alice T. might be reduced as an ultra-effective contraceptive pill. Indeed, seeing the eponymous movie will cut you off any desire for fatherhood. For the next ten years... at least! The two main protagonists are female, a mother and her adopted daughter, and the few men are symbolically reduced to the status of anecdotal appearances. On my humble opinion, this female-centric storyline highlights an unconditional mother's love, without any male help (the mother dimension being stronger than the female one, as evidenced by a castrating post-tickle scene, for exemple), and the ineluctable consequences like the ability of a narcissistic teen to terrorize its own parent. As depressing as it may seem, this Romanian movie is quite well done, even if the director strives to concomitantly treat too many subjects: sterility and adoption, divorce, early pregnancy, adolescence, father absence, ...

About youth, blood and beauty

[Marius_Stan · 10/10 · 21 October 2018]

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," wrote Leo Tolstoy. "Give me a T!" recently said a cheerleader. What's in a name, other that vanity? Alice T. could be your daughter or your distant niece or your high school crush. That is the key to this beautiful cinematographic masterwork: it is about you and yours. The movie is carried by Andra Guti and Mihaela Sirbu. The young and beautiful Ms. Guti is showing it all: her inexperience, her mischievousness and her genuine joy of life. Rarely one can witness the cruel effects of socially unacceptable conditions on apparently defenseless youth. And then the Mother of all people - especially yours and mine - the Mother who is always ready to defend us all and heal us all, the pinnacle of parental love, masterfully portrayed by Ms. Sirbu in a post-impressionist manner. I cannot explain why I love Cezanne and I cannot explain why I love Mihaela Sirbu but they made such an impression on me. Yes, the movie is dirty: lots of blood and lots of lies. But you have women in your life and they bleed and you still love them. Sometimes even more. As for lying, that is an expertise equally shared by men and women, teenagers and seniors, philosophers and politicians. So go see it and let the story swirl you in. You are up for unexpected rewards.