Film Festival Film #7: Outbound

[bcholmes]

This was an entertaining flick, but the plot pretty-much unfolds exactly how you'd expect it. Matilda is a twenty-something woman, serving time for assault. At the beginning of the film, she's being given a day pass to attend her mother's funeral. But she has no intention of coming back. She's already made arrangements with someone to smuggle her out of the country on a boat in exchange for 1500 Euros.

So, in this one day, she needs to attend her mother's funeral, visit her brother (with whom she has a difficult relationship), visit her former boyfriend -- an unlikeable underworld figure who is essentially responsible for putting her in the situation that lead to her assault arrest -- to get money, and visit her 8-year old son. And then to the boat.

The film is solidly done, and tightly edited. But the story doesn't ever go anywhere that I didn't expect. The lead actor, Ana Ularu, has an amazingly cold, intense expression through the whole film. And one can see why, given that everyone screws her over. Most of the times, you can see the screw-over coming.

The festival person who introduced the film says that Romania is entering a new era of film making; I'd be interested in seeing more Romanian films.