Pas în doi (Paso Doble)
Original post date: 20 May 1987
Rating: ✭✭✰✰
This is sort of a Romanian Heartbreak Kid. The film is framed by shots through a long corridor of a back lit young man in fencing gear. By the last shot, be has gone through hell (albeit a hell of his own making). Mihai is a young factory worker who is pretty darn cute. His hobbies include fencing, playing the flute, and making love to his girlfriend while listening to Haydn. He shares a room with Ghita in the workers hostel. Ghita, who looks like a slimmed down version of Avery Schreiber, is anything but smooth. When he tries to speak in public, he gets totally tongue-tied and then winds up giving the speech he meant to give later, standing in the shower with all his clothes on. Ghita is hopelessly smitten with an unwed mother/co-worker named Maria. But when she meets Mihai, she falls for him and he for her. Not that he lets this interfere with his stumbling into a vague betrothal with his other girlfriend. This film is unmistakably Eastern European. Workers committees and organizations provide the context for the action. But there are some surprisingly Western-looking aspects. In the park, a jogger wearing earphones passes. The workers all go to a disco, where Mihai and Ghita do a pretty wild rap while manning the turntables. The camera angles, editing, and use of music reminded me of nothing so much as Miami Vice (at least during its first couple of seasons). The cumulative effect of this film was strangely potent, and somehow it managed to do the best job I have seen of capturing what it is like to be male and single.
Rating: ✭✭✰✰
This is sort of a Romanian Heartbreak Kid. The film is framed by shots through a long corridor of a back lit young man in fencing gear. By the last shot, be has gone through hell (albeit a hell of his own making). Mihai is a young factory worker who is pretty darn cute. His hobbies include fencing, playing the flute, and making love to his girlfriend while listening to Haydn. He shares a room with Ghita in the workers hostel. Ghita, who looks like a slimmed down version of Avery Schreiber, is anything but smooth. When he tries to speak in public, he gets totally tongue-tied and then winds up giving the speech he meant to give later, standing in the shower with all his clothes on. Ghita is hopelessly smitten with an unwed mother/co-worker named Maria. But when she meets Mihai, she falls for him and he for her. Not that he lets this interfere with his stumbling into a vague betrothal with his other girlfriend. This film is unmistakably Eastern European. Workers committees and organizations provide the context for the action. But there are some surprisingly Western-looking aspects. In the park, a jogger wearing earphones passes. The workers all go to a disco, where Mihai and Ghita do a pretty wild rap while manning the turntables. The camera angles, editing, and use of music reminded me of nothing so much as Miami Vice (at least during its first couple of seasons). The cumulative effect of this film was strangely potent, and somehow it managed to do the best job I have seen of capturing what it is like to be male and single.
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