Boogie

Readers familiar with ‘The Death of Mr Lazarescu’ or ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days’ will recognise the hallmarks of recent Romanian filmmaking in this third film from Radu Muntean. Naturalistic performances, long takes, unfussy edits and a story that unfolds over a few hours are all present and correct.

It’s true that Muntean’s film about a young father and husband, Bogdan (Dragos Bucur), who, while at the coast with his wife (Anamaria Marinca) and child, bumps into two feckless old pals who take him for a night of drinking, is less impressive in its storytelling than those earlier films and certainly more domestic in its interests. But its observations of the pushes and pulls between adulthood and youthful freedoms are still acute. The best scenes play out between husband and wife as the presence of old friends ignite frustrations that are already smouldering.