Romanian Film Review – Sorella di Clausura & Gipsy Queen

Two stories by and featuring women are currently (still) in cinemas and I venture to say they might be among the year's most thrilling: Ivana Mladenović's Cloistered Sister/ Sorella di Clausura and Hüseyin Tabak's Gipsy Queen.

Sorella di Clausura is Stela. Or Stelaaaaa, as she herself screams out, a hilarious reference to the scene in Tennessee Williams's play A Streetcar Called Desire, spoofed so much in pop culture (you might remember Seinfeld) and probably the most adequate way to react as an audience. Stela’s journey is bonkers and relatable at the same time. She is an odd, frumpy thirty-something, living with her family in a crammed flat in Timișoara and has been having a years-long, huge crush on Serbian pop singer Boban, who has seen better days. Stela’s sexual relations to men leave her cold (unlike the thought of Boban), she has no problem spending the family’s last money on his concert, and is just as unfazed by her job. When she harasses Boban’s (alleged) Romanian lover, she manages to charm her enough with her creative insults to be invited to Bucharest and work for the woman’s business selling sex products, and then takes a stab at writing a novel, because why not. A silly, abrasive, slapsticky film that radiates not necessarily chaos – that would be an immediate thought just because Stela’s way is pure chaos – but utter freedom, a sense of movement and freedom and carelessness about conventions and rhythm singular in Romanian cinema. It's also almost tactile in its textured recreation of the early 2000s and crammed interiors full of knickknack. The photography is to die for, saturated to the max, uncannily evocative of places and helped immensely by the perfect set design, embracing the characters in the warmest, most over-the-top light.