TIFF Review: The Way I Spend the End of the World

September 12, 2006

By Martha Fischer

Film festivals, even those as prestigious as Toronto, are lousy with first features. Most of the time the best you can hope from them are a few films that, while not necessarily great, hint at a bright future for their creators. More often than not, the most impressive debuts (like Manolo Nieto's The Dog Pound, for example) reveal enough vision and ability that the weaknesses in the films are easy to overlook, and you're left eager to see the director's sophomore effort. On rare occasions, however, you see a film so confident and effective that it's almost frightening to consider what the director will produce once he or she gets some experience; The Way I Spent the End of the World from first-time writer-director Catalin Mitulescu is one of those revelations.

From the first shot of the film, we're drawn into a world of tremendous vitality and warmth, so powerful and convincing that everyone we see on screen is instantly a fully formed individual and fundamentally real. Set in Romania towards the end of the Ceausescu regime, The Way I Spent the End of the World depicts a few months in the life of one family as they deal with universal struggles like raising kids, finding work, and abiding by societal expectations. Daughter Eva (a forceful, magnetic Doroteea Petre) is the heart of the family: Wise and passionate, she possesses an intelligence so fierce it renders her dark beauty almost over powering. Poised on the cusp of adulthood, she expresses herself through questioning -- not necessarily because she disagrees, but as a way of spreading her wings, and exploring her impact on the world. One person Eva never questions, though, is her adored little brother Lalalilu. Ferociously played by Timotei Duma, Lalalilu is a marvelous character, filled with rambunctious, six-year-old energy and tough and perceptive beyond his years. (Duma gives such a convincing, natural performance in the role that one strongly suspects he's simply playing himself.)

The family is part of a tight-knit, working-class town in which everyone knows everyone else, and everyone thinks they know how the others should live. Though there are fundamental disagreements between neighbors and friends, there's also an undeniable closeness among them, and some of the most magical scenes in the movie show the whole town swept away in moments of shared, childish joy. The total lack of contrivance in these moments is one of the many signs of Mitulescu's abundant talents; done differently, they would have been cloying and unbearable, but in his hands they're imbued with a wonderful, impossible innocence.

When Eva's boyfriend Alex accidentally-on-purpose smashes a bust of Ceausescu at school, her presence in the room when it happened is enough to get her kicked out of the school's Communist Youth Group, and she's sent to a trade school -- the last resort for kids who don't properly conform. Targeted by her new classmates for both harassment and lust, Eva never blinks. She responds to the aggression and awkward flirtation with smiles and offhand rejection, and learns to enjoy her new, refreshingly heterogeneous environment. In particular, she becomes close to Andrei, a new neighbor whose parents are widely rumored to have publicly opposed the government (leading, the town assumes, to their sudden appearance in the little town, and Andrei's presence at the trade school).

Though Ceausescu and his government are constants in The Way I Spent the End of the World, they're not its point. The movie is not about life under a communist regime, it's about a family that just happens to live under one -- a small distinction but an important one, because it allows Mitulescu to focus on his story rather than constantly reminding us how dif

--Martha Fisher/ Cinematical - Review

The final year of Ceausescu's reign of terror in Romania forms a dramatic backdrop to "How I Spent the End of the World," Catalin Mitulescu's charmingly told first feature about a spunky 17-year-old girl on the cusp of adulthood and her unruly little brother. Mitulescu, whose short film "Trafic" won a Palm d'Or two years ago, works confidently within a traditional, anecdotal storytelling framework, enlivened by young Dorotheea Petre's ("Ryna") luminous perf.

Pic joins a spate of fine recent Romanian films (most notably, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," discovered in Cannes last year) which are slowly finding audience as well as critical support...winning the 2005 Sundance/NHK award for best European project and getting the high sign from Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders, who are listed as associate producers.

Mitulescu successfully negotiates the tricky byways of the film's tragi-comic tone, offering the viewer a sense of the era as it was lived by ordinary, unheroic people who fearfully stayed in the shadows until the revolution suddenly overturned their world.

--Deborah Young/ Variety - Review

It's a drag to be a fiercely independent teenage girl with integrity in Romania in 1989...This gorgeously shot family drama frames the parallel coming-of-age tales of the tautly sexy Eva and her younger brother Lali within the last days of the Communist stranglehold on the Eastern Block nation. A provocative, sensual and bittersweet look at the complicated tensions between rebellion and loyalty.

--Eye Weekly - Review