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At the opposite end you have Andrei Cohn’s Arrest, which pummels you to absolute numbness by the end of its running time. It all starts with a hapless architect being arrested by the Securitate on a nudist beach in the 1980s and stuck in a cell with a criminal who extracts ‘confessions’ from the other inmates in return for a milder sentence. And boy, does he love his job. He is a sadist who tortures his cellmate mentally and physically with a delight that is hard to stomach, until the poor man confesses to listening to Radio Free Europe and knowing bands like AC/DC or Led Zeppelin. The relentless verbosity and bullying, while justifiable plot-wise, is in fact too much too take in two hours, and just as the helpless victim who holds on to civility to a degree that becomes incredulous, the audience is also driven mad. The beatings and physical torture are not the most gruesome but it seems the whole the film tries to make its point by relying solely on their repetition. While none of this is played for titillation, and the question of showing versus suggesting violence in cinema is an old and debatable one, this film is definitely showing too much. According to interviews, the director’s intention was to raise the question of individual compromise when living in an oppressive system and of collective complicity, but sadly what this film does is merely bludgeon its audience until they count the minutes to the end credits. The mature (and necessary) handling of such complex issues is left for another time.

Radu Dragomir’s Mo also tackles an urgent issue, but while it is less nuanced than Monsters, it also fares much better than Arrest. Based on true facts, it the story of two female students being caught cheating by their professor and ending up in his apartment one night at his invitation. What ensues is not a big surprise and the tension arises from the way the three characters circle each other blurring the lines between attraction, abuse, and manipulation. The atmosphere is relaxed at first, with a few hints at the danger looming (in a moment of pitch-black humour, they discuss 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and the moral of the story is to always be up to date with your arthouse cinema). The abuse of power here is clear from the start, but it is complicated by how the victim relates emotionally to the abuser. The explicit scene of sexual violence is well done and the ending is credible even if a bit anticlimatic. The film has a gripping rhythm and fine performances, and while it stumbles in terms of subtlety, dialogue, and plausibility, it also manages to subvert expectations at times and keep things mostly relatable. It may not be the most assured take on the current discussion on sexual abuse, but in a country with horrifying statistics and views on sexual violence, it is an earnest, welcome entry.

(Photo source: cinemagia.ro)