In Occident three stories unfold - closely overlapping in terms of time, place and characters - to build a snapshot of Romania at a crucial turning-point in its history. Though nimbly incorporating the political, social, economic and historical context of a nation previously best known for "Count Dracula and Nadia Comaneci," this is a film that deals with its major issues by concentrating on ordinary people trying to deal with the pressures of modern life.

Luci (Alexandru Papadopol) and Sorina are a young couple whose marriage is severely tested by financial problems. Luci confides his difficulties in his friend Michaela (Tania Popa), who herself has to cope with the matchmaking plans of her marriage-obsessed mother (Coca Bloos). Her father (Dorel Visan), meanwhile, retires from the police force, and receives some tragic news about Luci's cousin, who fled to the west during the Ceausescu era.

Occident emerges as a low-key cross between Run Lola Run (after a low-key start, its impact grows exponentially over three separate sections) and Magnolia: Mungiu pays as much attention to the tiny specifics and subtle details of the characters and their environments as he does to the ambitious wider structure into which it all so satisfyingly slots - keep an eye out for the ubiquitous ‘oxcart' paintings in the background.

The multiple-narrative technique isn't exactly ground-breaking any more, and there's certainly no shortage of quirky character-based comedy-dramas coming out of central and eastern Europe at the moment. It's unusual, however, to come across a script so ambitious and accomplished - Mungiu's main strength clearly lies in his writing, he does a competent enough job of bringing it to the screen. He only makes one notable error - building to a terrific final freeze-frame, then letting the action begin again for a superfluous few extra seconds.

Mungiu does delight, however, in wrongfooting audience expectations, and manages the tricky feat of keeping the characters broadly sympathetic even while accurately endowing some of them with less-than-endearing traits. This has resulted in Occident coming under fire for "blatant naïve racism" in the ‘Michaela and Her Mother' section, but the film is explicitly anti-racist. In the words of one of his characters, Mungiu's approach involves "looking life in the eye" to diagnose the very real social problems that afflict this country in the throes of painful transition.

This is the move away from Eastern-Bloc (formerly Soviet) influence towards the West (‘occident' as opposed to ‘orient'), specifically the possibility of European-Union membership. Bucharest's capitalist revolution is, we see, already in full swing - fancy housing developments are springing up not far from cramped, squalid tenements ("Nowadays, there are so many rich people," marvels one resident). A city store is named ‘More and More: A Life Philosophy,' while at one point Luci and Michaela find jobs as walking advertisements - she wears a mobile-phone costume, he becomes a walking beer bottle. In a typically understated comic touch, he then makes a phone call while she sips a can of Coke.

Romanians have one unusual linguistic advantage, their language being a sister-tongue of Italian - residents of the two nations apparently have no difficulty understanding each other. But the prospect of EU membership isn't without its perils - the fear is that talented people will be lured, like Luci's cousin before them, to the bright lights and higher wages of the west. Indeed, Occident has been described in terms of Mungiu "[shaking] his head at his characters' departure... without suggesting any compelling reason to stay." But the film itself represents one reason to stick around - if Romania can come up with such a skilful and intricate movie, the country's clearly got something going for it.

Neil Young
28th/29th October, 2002

OCCIDENT : [8/10] : Romania 2002 : Cristian MUNGIU : 110mins (approx)
seen at Ster Century Cinema, Leeds (UK), 7th October 2002 : Leeds International Film Festival