THE BALANCE (1979) – drama film online

Directed by: Cristiana Nicolae
Script by: Horia Pătrașcu
Cast: Ernest Maftei, Ovidiu Iuliu Moldovan, Ioana Pavelescu, Mircea Albulescu, Florin Zamfirescu, Adina Popescu, Dinu Lazăr
Producer: Film House 3
Cinematography by: Marian Iordache
Edited by: Magda Chișe Ghincioiu
Sound: Andrei Coler
Music: Lucian Mețianu
Year: 1979
Category: Feature film
Genre: Police movie
Duration: 82 minutes

PLOT SUMMARY

On New Year’s Eve, in an isolated mountain cabin inhabited by the cabin keeper, his granddaughter, and her fiancé, two tourists lost in a blizzard and two criminals who had managed to escape the patrol that had cornered them arrive. The alarm raised by the cabin keepers triggers dramatic events.

CRITICAL REVIEWS:

“From the outset, Fulga’s maturity is uncertain — while physically she is a grown woman, within her family she is merely a granddaughter. We know virtually nothing about her parents, who have always been absent. Her grandfather takes care of her and directs her life, acting as the discreet protector of her marriage and, implicitly, of her fulfillment as a woman. But when the woman wakes up in the arms of a teddy bear, a gift from her grandfather, it becomes clear that we are dealing with a marked psychological regression. The old man, who has replaced parental authority, seems to refuse to see that his granddaughter has long been a woman with her own rights, needs, and desires. In a trivial psychoanalytic case study, Fulga would be a young woman who tells her psychoanalyst about a nightmare. The clarification she makes to the men when they burst into the house is not just a filler line: she is engaged to Pavel, not married. Given the strictures of the times and the culture of the mountain village, the young woman is about to get married and spend her wedding night, which awakens all her fears as a virgin. In essence, she is at a crossroads, as the title mysteriously suggests.” – Augustin Cupșa, cinepub.ro

“There is one thing, quite serious, that I would criticize about this film. That unhealthy fascination, that pleasure of showing off behind the wheel of your own car, as well as the fact that the most guilty of the guilty is a future guilty party, who only becomes guilty towards the end of the story, burdening himself with new guilt (blackmail, and ultimately betrayal even against his own family) — all these elements were not treated cinematographically. They did not give rise to numerous and varied small details that would evoke them like a rhyme. This is the flaw that I have always pointed out in Romanian filmmakers: they have good ideas, but they lose them along the way.” – D. I. Suchianu in România literară magazine no. 7, February 14, 1980

“The behavior of the two travelers is suspicious and bizarre. One (played by Mircea Albulescu) is an interesting man; at times he is ice-cold and perfectly polite, and at other times he bursts into violent outbursts, smashing everything around him. He expresses himself eloquently, often with irony and sarcasm. His companion (Vova: Florin Zamfirescu) is not without a certain sickly aspect either. He is not childish, but rather regressed into childhood, backward, always unsure of himself (although, or perhaps precisely because) he has bouts of extravagance, both in terms of cowardice and chivalry. But the viewer understands that the hint of madness in these two does not excuse them, but makes them even more hateful.” – Valerian Sava in România literară magazine no. 7, February 14, 1980

“The simplicity of Horia Pătraşcu’s subject (a new mountain cabin, not yet on the market, where a small number of people, including the recent perpetrator of a crime and his accomplice, happen to spend New Year’s Eve) was, I would say, only apparent. It was a kind of trap in which the director allowed herself to be caught, with a naivety that she confesses, explicitly and repeatedly, in the text of the director’s cut.” – Valerian Sava in România literară magazine no. 7, February 14, 1980

TRIVIA:

• “The Balance” is a crime film based on a screenplay by Horia Pătrașcu, also known as the screenwriter of the film “The Reenactment”.
• The plot follows a suspenseful situation that takes place in a mountain cabin on New Year’s Eve, where the female character Fulga (Ioana Pavelescu) is caught in an ambiguous game between several groups of tourists.
• The film provoked negative reactions in the cultural apparatus of the time: Miu Dobrescu, president of the Council for Culture and Socialist Education, wanted to force the director to pay the production costs, considering that the directing style was too influenced by American detective films.
• The measure could not be enforced because the script approved for production also bore Dobrescu’s official signature, which made it impossible to subsequently sanction the film.
• Director Cristiana Nicolae was born Cristiana Iliescu in 1943 in Târgoviște, into a family with roots in the Alimăneșteni boyar clan.
• She ended up studying directing at the IATC “I. L. Caragiale” almost by chance: in 1965, she took the directing exam after a bet made by her sister with the future director Mircea Veroiu. However, she dropped out of the competition in the final stage and only actually enrolled at IATC in 1966, after giving up a job as a TAROM flight attendant on international routes.
• She made her feature film debut with “The Return of Magellan” (1973), based on her own screenplay inspired by an idea from Radu Cosașu’s novel. The film had 1,636,340 viewers by 1997, although it was initially released in a single copy.
• “The Return of Magellan” was presented in 1974 at the Rencontres Internationales Film et Jeunesse de la Cannes, a festival dedicated to youth films.
• The ending of the debut film was changed at the request of the management of Film House Three, which imposed the introduction of a voice-over written by studio director Eugen Mandric, a change that the director considered an unfair intervention in the film.
• Her filmography includes nine feature films, covering a variety of genres: historical drama (“The River That Climbs the Mountain”), crime film (“The Crossroads”), sports film (“Winter Stars”), films about teenagers (“For Your Sake, Anca”, “The Fourth Fence, Near the Pier”, “Recital in the Garden with Dwarves”) or fantasy adaptations (“The Inn Between the Hills”).
• She also directed the children’s miniseries “The White Rocket”, which was very popular in the 1980s.
• After 1990, the director settled in Canada, where she taught film courses at universities in Montreal, made documentaries, and worked for a time as a Russian translator for the Quebec government.
• In Canada, she also turned her attention to transpersonal psychology, a field in which she later specialized.

LINES:

 • “Fulga, run away with me! I need someone so badly!” – Vova (Florin Zamfirescu)
• “We’re great, we’re great!” – Livia (Adina Popescu)
• “Pour some wine!” – Bucur (Ernest Maftei)
• “Vova, collecting folklore, walking around the house with that wounded man.” – Fulga (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “It seems you have something to discuss with the police.” – Fulga (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “Not everyone has the courage to eat and sleep in the same house with a man who has just been released from prison.” – Bogdan (Mircea Albulescu)
• “Stop drinking, dear father!” – Fulga (Ioana Pavelescu)
• “With the money I take from you, I’m buying a car.” – Pavel (Ovidiu Iuliu Moldovan)
• “I’m sorry, old man. You behaved humanely. But now there are too many who know.” – Bogdan (Mircea Albulescu)
• “He’ll never have the courage to remember this night.” – Bogdan (Mircea Albulescu)
• “Vova who plays poker and takes the workers’ money.” – Bogdan (Mircea Albulescu)
• “Bogdan doesn’t exist. I am nobody.” – Bogdan (Mircea Albulescu)
• “The dead with the dead, the living with the living.” – Pavel (Ovidiu Iuliu Moldovan)
• “What’s up, Mr. Bucur? Pretending to be John Wayne?” – Pavel (Ovidiu Iuliu Moldovan)
• “In life, there are good things and things you have to fight for to make them good.” – Bucur (Ernest Maftei)

ARTICLES:

• The director who disappeared without a trace – scena9.ro
• Film review: “Cumpăna” (The Balance), by D. I. Suchianu – aarc.ro
• Film review: “Cumpăna” (The Balance), by Valerian Sava – aarc.ro
• Cristiana Nicolae retrospective – arhiva.unatc.ro
• Two Movies on the Lives of Women Factory Workers (1983, 1992, Romania) – jstor.org

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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