Romanian film review – Striking Gold: Berlinale 2018

The Berlin International Film Festival has just ended and how wonderful to be able to say its big winner is a Romanian film!

Congratulations to Adina Pintilie for her striking debut Nu mă atinge-mă/Touch Me Not.What an achievement! The Berlinale (as it is shortly and fondly called) is one of the most important international festivals worldwide, so Pintilie coming (seemingly) out of nowhere and snatching the prize is major.

Touch Me Not has caused quite a stir, and that is no small feat for a production in a competition which featured its fair share of shockers (from Steven Soderbergh nasty iPhone thriller Unsaneto Erik Poppe’s gut-wrenching fictional reenactment of the 2011 massacre on the Norwegian island of Utøya, U - July 22).

A mixture of documentary and drama, Touch Me Not focuses on a middle-aged woman who struggles with intimacy and her attempts to understand and (if possible) overcome her fears. The persons she crosses paths with either have similar issues, or help others overcome them. It is difficult to outline a plot, since the film does not have a conventional one (it is mostly a series of interviews, discussions, and meetings) - and also I wouldn’t want to give away too much. But I can say it is an intelligent, heartfelt film. Its franc depiction of nudity and sex has upset some, and its ambitions annoyed others, but for all its flaws, this is fearless, dedicated, and ultimately very moving filmmaking.

Ioana Uricaru’s Lemonade is another feature debut and it was screened in the Panorama section, which is dedicated to debuts, second or third features. A Romanian, Canadian, German and Swedish co-production, Lemonade is set in the United States where Mara, a young Romanian woman just married to an American citizen is applying for her Green Card. With her young son from a previous relationship having just arrived, she is preparing for a new start. But things seldom turn out as planned, especially when legal issues are concerned, and as her Green Card application seems to be problematic, things get very nasty, very fast.