ASTRAY (1978) – drama film online

Directed by: Alexandru Tatos
Script by: Ion Băieșu, Alexandru Tatos
Cast: Ioana Pavelescu, Klaus Gehrke, Dan Nuțu, Marga Legal, Gina Patrichi, Regine Heintze, Emilia Dobrin, Albert Kitzl, Brândușa Marioțeanu, Kity Stroescu, Dorel Vișan, Wolfgang Bathke, Constantin Dumitrescu, Silvia Popovici, Ion Besoiu, Benone Sinulescu, Irina Loghin
Producer: Silvia Kerim
Cinematography by: Florin Mihăilescu
Edited by: Yolanda Mîntulescu
Sound: Horea Murgu
Music: Temistocle Popa
Year: 1978
Category: Feature film
Genre: Drama
Duration: 97 minutes

49,744 – Cinepub viewers

PLOT SUMMARY

Ioana Pavelescu plays the role of a young woman who gives up her previous life, including her handsome boyfriend played by Dan Nuţu, to seek happiness in a free society. Once in Germany, after a period of euphoria, she begins to regret her old life, unable to adapt to the new culture she has entered.

CRITICAL REVIEWS:

“The film is structured around the antithesis between the idyllic image of socialist Romania and that of a capitalist world marked by all the evils attributed to it by communist propaganda (drug use, excessive violence, social disparities, right-wing extremism, unhealthy sexuality). The director’s touches are crude, with the clear intention of conveying a sense of degeneration. In one of the most significant scenes in Astray, Doina goes to a masked ball where there are only women — many of them lesbians — whom the film’s director of photography, Florin Mihăilescu, films with a wide-angle lens that grotesquely distorts their faces. The film’s ending is instructive, with Doina returning to the country by train and bursting into tears at the sight of a group of young people fooling around at the Predeal train station.” – Bogdan Jitea, iiccmer.ro
“A simple and sad story, if we see in it only a moral about female frivolity. A drama of vast proportions, if we are willing to place the heroine in a broader perspective, much broader than her own perspective. “Broader” is a manner of speaking, because the protagonist, although a student (graded with a ten), does not see much in space or time. She is a girl born in a house with a fountain in the yard, a beautiful girl who also wants “to drink coffee in the pool”, as she has seen other beautiful girls do in the movies. She believes she can make a deal: eternal love in exchange for a Mercedes. She believes it, but she can’t”. – Ecaterina Oproiu, România liberă, April 26, 1978, aarc.ro

“Ioana Pavelescu is both charming and convincing, both in photogenic scenes and in scenes of real pain, but to be fair, the character is a bit simple, and a girl who sees love through the prism of “what can you offer me?” may shed tears, but not tremulous philosophical anxieties. I found the male character to be more complex and particularly well cast in the person of Klaus Gehrke. The actor admirably reproduces the gestures of a man in love. He is a sincere lover, and in his own way, generous. But he is a lover from another planet. He wants to understand her, but he cannot. The lack of communication is not between two human beings, but between two human conditions: Hans recounts how he was born in a Mercedes, and Dan Nuțu (always unchanged, but how well the style of an angry young man suits him here!) shouts at him: “And I was born in Hîrlău!” The girl wasn’t born in Hîrlău, but the difference isn’t about a big car and a small town. The difference lies in the famous saying: ubi bene, ibi patria. But where is it good?” – Ecaterina Oproiu, România liberă, April 26, 1978, aarc.ro

“Alexandru Tatos employs a transparent directorial style, in which the intention or thesis is not exaggerated by visual effects, movements, or deliberate punctuation. Rarely does a particular angle emphasize meaning, as in the New Year’s Eve scene seen from the ceiling, sepulchral. More often, a prop detail parodies a presumption or a state of affairs, such as the table already set at which Doina invites her first boyfriend, in the presence of her husband. The director’s art extends from interior scenes to group scenes and noisy environments, to paraphrase other categories of observations, for example in the carnival sequence, in which the sexual obsessions of that society appear in disguise, the tragedy concealed in a grotesque naivety (a highlight of the virtuosity of cinematographer Florin Mihăilescu and costume designer Svetlana Schiopu).” – Valerian Sava, Cinema no. 6, June 1978, aarc.ro

“We recognize, in this solemn film, the director’s lucidity and sensitivity, abundantly demonstrated in his theatrical productions and confirmed by his first cinematic creation, a marked sense of balance”. – Călin Căliman, Contemporanul – April 21, 1978, istoriafilmului.ro

“The inability to adapt, the tyranny of homesickness, the sincerity of the friendships left behind, the threat of failure are the paths along which the filmmaker guides his heroine with an obvious knowledge of epic discourse, during which authentic moments of emotional capture arise”. – Magda Mihăilescu, Informaţia Bucureştiului, April 18, 1978

“Tatos is not only a director, he is also an intellectual.” – Eugenia Vodă, agenda.liternet.ro

“In Tatos’ film, there are two worlds that are necessarily in a relationship of antonymy, as required by PCR policy. The signs of “heritage” that such a socially commissioned film had to defend (weddings with musicians and proto-manele songs; dance parties and nature trips with a group of friends, which imply a certain type of communication and friendly solicitude) are opposed to the deceptive glitz of Western life (the multicolored advertisements on the streets; the luxury of Hans’s family; the charitable actions of the aristocratic aunt) and its rigidity. Only the talent of a team (director, cameraman, actors) was able to diminish the ridiculousness and artificiality of this Manichean, irreconcilable contrast. Doina’s journey from east to west could only end, couldn’t it, with her return home.” – Marian Rădulescu, agenda.liternet.ro

“Unlike his other films, this time the director works in broad strokes, driven by the need to construct a satirical register with grotesque nuances. (…) It is an aseptic universe, completely opposite to the Romanian one, remarkable precisely because of its porosity, which borders on chatter, and its exuberance, which can sometimes veer towards temporary excesses (such as some of the conversations and clashes in the wedding scene).” – Andrei Rus, cinepub.ro

“The reality is that the entire discourse of the film is based on clichéd ideas about the two blocs on either side of the Iron Curtain. Given this defining aspect, it is all the more surprising (and admirable) that the predictable ending of Doina’s return home is not marked by propaganda, but rather serves to temper the overly simplistic interpretations that the film seemed to invite until then.” – Andrei Rus, cinepub.ro

TRIVIA:

• Alexandru Tatos was born on March 9, 1937, in Bucharest, and died on January 31, 1990, also in Bucharest.
• He graduated from the Theater Direction Department of the “I.L. Caragiale” Institute of Theater and Cinematographic Art in 1970. Before devoting himself to film, he was active in theater: he directed plays at the State Theater in Sibiu, the Popular Theater in Râmnicu Vâlcea, the Bulandra Theater in Bucharest, the National Theater in Cluj, and the State Theater in Ploieşti.
• It was not until the age of 39 that he made his feature film debut with “Red Apples” (1976). From his very first film, he earned an important place among his contemporary Romanian filmmakers.
• He confirmed his talent by subsequently making several excellent feature films, “Astray” (1978), “Gently was Anastasia passing” (1979), and two masterpieces, one already almost unanimously recognized as such: “Sequences” (1980), the other contested, “The Secret of the Secret Weapon” (1988).
• As he himself wrote in his posthumously published diary: “I may not have said anything profound, but I only spoke about what I believed.” This attitude reflects his moral integrity and his conviction that simply “well-made” cinema has value.
• After his death at the age of only 52, his work began to be reevaluated in the years that followed: retrospectives were dedicated to him, his films were re-released, and he is increasingly mentioned by film critics and historians.
• The film was seen by 1,755,175 viewers in Romanian cinemas, according to data compiled by the National Center for Cinematography on the number of viewers recorded by Romanian films from the date of release until December 31, 2014.

LINES:

• “I’m not joking, Adrian. I think about you all the time.” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “It’s my aunt’s house. One day it will be mine.” – Hans (Klaus Gehrke)
• “Hans is very nice to me. I think I’ve started to love him.” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “I’ve got a surprise for you. (…) Sarmale (cabbage rolls)!” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “I miss everyone.” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “What can you offer me, Adrian?” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “Maybe love will come with time.” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “You are what you call a successful specimen.” – Amalia (Emilia Dobrin)
• “I want to have money, to travel, to see the world, to move in their world.” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “I can’t settle for a mediocre existence.” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “I’m upset. I can only see that I’ve started to rot!” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “I’m fed up. I’m not going back home.” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “God forbid, but what, have you been drinking?” – Neli (Brândușa Marioțeanu)
• “This is the neighborhood of foreigners. Unemployed people, vagabonds. I’m afraid to go home.” – Neli (Brândușa Marioțeanu)
• “You don’t take notes on Eminescu, you listen to Eminescu on your knees.” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “Are you happy?” – Viorel (Albert Kitzl)
• “Their coffee is just water.” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “My dear, if you thought this was heaven on earth, what can I do for you?” – Delia Stoenescu (Gina Patrichi)
• “Why did I leave?” – Delia Stoenescu (Gina Patrichi)
• “I’m going home.” – Doina (Ioana Pavelescu)

ARTICLES:

• “Astray” (1978) – iiccmer.ro
• “Astray” – film review, by Ecaterina Oproiu – aarc.ro
• “Astray” – film review, by Valerian Sava – aarc.ro
• Chronicle of an Alienation – agenda.liternet.ro
• “Astray” – istoriafilmului.ro
• Alexandru Tatos – The Feverishness of an Exceptional Talent – agenda.liternet.ro
• Alexandru Tatos’ cinema of ideas (70 years since his birth) – agenda.liternet.ro
• Alexandru Tatos retrospective at the Elvira Popescu Cinema – icr.ro
• Alexandru Tatos: filmmaker by vocation 1. – istoriafilmului.ro
• Personality of the day: Director Alexandru Tatos – agerpres.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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