AND THEY MAY STILL BE ALIVE TODAY (2019) – drama film online

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Directed by: Tudor Cristian Jurgiu
Script: Tudor Cristian Jurgiu, Anca Tăbleț
Cast: Bogdan Nechifor, Nicoleta Hâncu
Producer: Tudor Giurgiu, Bogdan Crăciun
Cinematography by: Laurențiu Răducanu
Edited by: Dragoș Apetri
Sound: Filip Mureșan
Year: 2019
Category: Feature film
Genre: Drama
Duration: 73 minutes

8,098 – Cinepub viewers

PLOT SUMMARY

Clara (Nicoleta Hâncu) and Vlad (Bogdan Nechifor) have a relationship with timing issues. When Vlad is jealous, Clara is confident. When Clara is enthusiastic, Vlad is bored. When Vlad is happy, Clara is depressed. When she is angry, he is calm. Only when he becomes Prince Charming does she finally become his princess. Seduced by the idea of perfect love, like in movies and books, the two do everything they can to experience it for themselves.

AWARDS

• 2020 – Gopo Awards – “Young Hope” Award (Laurențiu Răducanu)
• 2020 – Gopo Awards – Nomination for “Best Actress in a Leading Role” (Nicoleta Hâncu)

CRITICAL REVIEWS:

“Jurgiu’s psychological approach is supported by contrasting aesthetics. On the one hand, there is an almost Bazian realism, where the feeling that we only have access to a moment in time gives the entire film an authentic and unprocessed texture. However, this realism is tempered by inserts that refuse to keep us in the role of mere observers. The fairy tale narrated by Clara’s voice and the static images of the slides do not belong to the diegetic world of the characters, but emanate from their collective psyche. Jurgiu’s film is not purely realistic, but flirts with magical realism, in which the banality of everyday life is haunted by projections of the subconscious. However, these elements do not function as an escape from reality, but rather as an ironic commentary on it. Each fragment of fairy tale accentuates, by contrast, the prosaic nature of the real relationship. The subconscious offers no magical solutions, but only reflects the unbridgeable gap between the ideal and reality, a gap that Clara is not yet ready to come to terms with.” – Andrei Voineag, cinepub.ro

“Neither she nor he have enough depth — they are both generic. This is largely because the director-screenwriter did not create them in relation to a wider world, so that their characters could be enriched as they interact with relatives and colleagues, with jobs and projects and passions. At one point, we see the boy wearing a helmet, surrounded by digging machines, but that’s all. The girl goes to a party at one point, but we don’t see her there.” – Andrei Gorzo, andreigorzoblog.wordpress.ro

“In Romanian cinema, the closest reference point is Ana Lungu’s films – “Self-Portrait of a Dutiful Girl” (2015) and “One and a Half Prince” (2018). Dealing from within a hipster-bohemian micro-niche, these films also have elements of narcissism and preciousness. The difference in Lungu’s favor — which is significant — lies in her truly idiosyncratic characters, her lucid desire for self-documentation, and the ethnographic aspect of her approach. Perhaps Jurgiu’s film also says something interesting about a certain escapist-romantic sensibility of our age, which can be associated with a particular social group, but it is interesting strictly as a symptom; artistically, it does not have enough force.” – Andrei Gorzo, andreigorzoblog.wordpress.ro

“Vlad (Bogdan Nechifor) and Clara (Nicoleta Hâncu) live a contemporary fairy tale on the outskirts of Bucharest, where the kingdom is far from a flamboyant castle, but rather a simple apartment block. The matchmaker, none other than Clara, chooses Vlad after a tiring, mythical journey through the slums of Bucharest, where he lives in a hovel, wearing ragged clothes and surrounded by cats. When he arrives, Jurgiu introduces a mini-comic situation, she asks him “where is your master?”, showing that he is not the dashing prince she had hoped for.” – Georgiana Mușat, filmsinframe.com

“The film talks about instability in a couple, giving the impression that love is viewed from the outside, without the inner thrill of the partners’ involvement.” – Adrian Țion, agenda.liternet.ro

TRIVIA:

• Tudor Cristian Jurgiu made his feature film debut with “The Japanese Dog” in 2013, for which Victor Rebengiuc won the award for best actor at the Gopo Awards Gala. The film also won awards at festivals in Moscow, Vilnius, and Warsaw.
• The two actors, Bogdan Nechifor and Nicoleta Hâncu, make their feature film debut in this film.
• About the film, the director said: “Many of us create an image of the perfect relationship and will not accept anything less. Often, however, such ideals do not survive contact with reality. The protagonists of the film struggle with the images in their heads and try to see the other person as they really are.”
• About the final sequence filmed in water, Nicoleta Hâncu said in an interview for Films in Frame magazine that it was physically very difficult. “After I got out of the water, I started shaking and couldn’t control my body.” (N.H.)
• When asked in an interview for Alist Magazine what the main message of the film is, Nicoleta Hâncu says: “That no one is entirely good or bad, that a relationship ends because the partners have grown in different directions, not because they don’t love each other, that you can choose, despite this breakup, to meet the other person. I think that in the age we live in, it’s much easier to give up on a relationship and, sometimes, even ‘cooler’ than to stay and try to find solutions. We run away from pain and become complacent and superficial. I exclude abusive relationships from this, of course.”
• On cinepub.ro, you can watch other films by director Tudor Cristian Jurgiu: the short films “Oli’s Wedding” (2009), “In the Fishbowl” (2012) and “In Which the Protagonist Hides and Then Has an Unexpected Encounter” (2015).

LINES:

• “Yes, I hate being alone more than I love you. But what does it matter, I’m here now. I was, well, I am.” – Vlad (Bogdan Nechifor)
• “You’re cursed. Turn around three times.” – Clara (Nicoleta Hâncu)
• “You are my chosen one and I am your chosen one.” – Clara (Nicoleta Hâncu)
• “I don’t have that look anymore. That girlish, fresh look…” – Clara (Nicoleta Hâncu)
• “I don’t want to end up as a sea creature at the bottom of the ocean. (…) I want us to stay like this, Vlad.” – Clara (Nicoleta Hâncu)
• “Everything changes.” – Vlad (Bogdan Nechifor)
• “Come on, love me properly! Come on! You don’t love me the way you should…” – Clara (Nicoleta Hâncu)
• “Speak normally. Speak normally, for fuck’s sake!” – Vlad (Bogdan Nechifor)
• “Thank you for being so kind and patient. I’m sorry I drive you crazy sometimes.” – Clara (Nicoleta Hâncu)
• “Speak normally. Speak normally, for fuck’s sake!” – Vlad (Bogdan Nechifor)
• “Thank you for being so kind and patient. I’m sorry I drive you crazy sometimes.” – Clara (Nicoleta Hâncu)
• “Tell me, crazy woman, am I still being nice? Tell me, you psychopath, am I still being nice?” – Vlad (Bogdan Nechifor)
• “Yeah, right, you’re nice and gentle, and you’ll stay that way!” – Clara (Nicoleta Hâncu)
• “Two broken people together, doing what we can.” – Vlad (Bogdan Nechifor)

ARTICLES:

• In conversation with the protagonists of the film “And They May Still Be Alive Today” – filmsinframe.com
• “And Maybe They Are Still Alive”, “Berliner”, and “The Certainty of Possibilities” – andreigorzoblog.wordpress.com
• And Maybe They Are Still Alive – Bells of Love – filmsinframe.ro
• Romanian film searches – “And Maybe They’re Still Alive Today” at TIFF, 2020 – agenda.liternet.ro
• Gopo Awards. Nicoleta Hâncu: “In relationships, we need to become vulnerable, to say what we feel!” – alistmagazine.ro

This premiere is part of a national archive project supported by the Romanian National Film Centre.
Special thanks goes to the Romanian Filmmakers Union and to the Romanian Film Archive.

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