Radu Muntean is the latest in the cohort of new Romanian directors to get international recognition. However, what it is novel in this case is that distributors didn’t pick his films because they won major awards (at Cannes mainly). Boogie comes to UK cinemas without much hype, but joins the slate of new releases as any other Hollywood, British or European film would do. The title itself allows it to slip unconsciously into the mind of the public in such a way that few would bother to check what country the film came from.

It is interesting that Muntean is the first director from Romania to mark this new turn in the thinking of distributors. His second film The Paper Will Be Blue has featured in a few festivals throughout the past few years, but without much luck of finding distribution. Boogie found its way much quicker to the cinema screens. The question to ask is why a film about an ordinary couple having an ordinary holiday is deemed more appealing for foreign audiences than one about the social consequences of the 1989 revolution?

The Paper Will Be Blue starts with a shooting of five soldiers by members of the same army. It is 23 December 1989 in Bucharest, the night when Ceauşescu is chased by the army that defended his dictatorship for so many years. A small platoon is patrolling in the suburbs, waiting for news of the events in the centre of the capital. No one is too keen to leave, especially Lieutenant Neagu (Adi Carauleanu). He is trying to defend the safety of his boys until morning. In his mind, he does not believe that the revolution will succeed, and so is playing the cards as well as he can. Costi (Paul Ipate) thinks otherwise, and after accusing his commander of being a member of the Securitate, leaves his platoon to fight in the revolution. The events so far could lead anyone to think that what they are about to witness is a reincarnation of the bloodshed that happened in Bucharest on that historic night. What Muntean is giving us is a restrained search for Costi amidst the battle.

The film is a unique exploration of the subject matter. By taking the focus away from the action, the director can easily focus on the confusion that haunted that night not so much a nation, but each individual. No one actually believes that the events will mark a meaningful change, but their desperation is taking them all to the street, their hope is driving them to extremes. It is a revolution in which no one knows their enemy. They all seem to hate the system, and their anger seems to be projected on anyone they find suspicious. Muntean is trying to understand with the rest of us what need there was for the bloodshed, especially when the army turned on the side of the people. Was the army planning to put an entire nation on trial? Was everyone ready to put everyone else around them on trial?

These questions are not the driving force of the narrative, though. The film feels like a documentary, yet it is as much fiction. What we learn in the light of the first image is almost all we’ll learn from the whole film. Muntean however is interested in exploring not so much ideas as thinking processes. This is one of the best analyses of collective confusion as the only outcome of a revolution. People fight, but at that moment their rationale is as clear as that of an inebriated man. People seem courageous, but their courage is derived from fear of failure, fear of persecution for that failure. Soldier or civilian both seem to have merged into the same individual when a country’s establishment is threatened, and then who is there to defend one against the other?

On the surface, Boogie seems to be a less challenging film. Bogdan (Dragoş Bucur) is in his early thirties. He is married to Smaranda (Anamaria Marinca). It is the 1st of May, and they are on holiday with their four year son (Vlad Muntean). Smaranda is expecting another child.

The first encounter with this family is magical. Bogdan is helping his son raise a kite in the sky, then he’ll help construct a castle, all under the loving gaze of his wife. They seem happy, at first. Actually, they are happy, but minor worries and untold grievances are slowly eroding the strength of that happiness. Bogdan does not shy to confess that her friends bore him. Smaranda insists that she is OK, when we can all see that there is something on her mind she does not say.

On their first day, they meet two of Bogdan’s high-school friends, Penescu (Mimi Brănescu) and Iordache (Adrian Vancică). They agree to meet for dinner. Smaranda does not refuse, but she can easily foresee that her husband will be looking forward to a long night out, while she’ll be the holiday nanny for the kid. Throughout the dinner, she slowly sees how her thought is becoming reality, when her loyal, respectful, reserved husband Bogdan slowly transforms into the rowdy teenager called Boogie. It is useless to describe in detail of what happens next, particularly when Boogie comes home prompted by a text saying: ‘I am going to bed. Good night’, has a fight with his wife, and then makes a drunken decision he might regret later.

Boogie is reflection on the post-revolution generation. The family has changed, the dialogue between partners become more equal, mutual respect has improved. The transition problems have made children into calculated adults who know the harshness of an independent life, free of control. Bogdan is working day and night to ensure his furniture workshop stays in business, Penescu is getting disillusioned by the decline in traditional tourism advertising affected by the new media and Iordache is struggling to get to terms with the fact that he has found a better life in Sweden, despite the menial jobs he has to do out there and the sustained relationship to a woman he does not love. Watching the film, one gets a strong idea about what a thirtysomething Romanian feels like nowadays.

However, it is not this analysis that makes the film so special, but rather it is the way the relationship between Bogdan and Smaranda is built and portrayed. Muntean does not reinvent the wheel of the trials a young family has to face. Morever, he uses it as tool to go somewhere where few films have dared – the ordinary day-to-day. We see the couple at noon, then in the evening, then at night, and then in the morning. In each of the scenes, we see their monotony, their discomfort, their anger, their forgiveness. These are expressed through half-spoken emotions, through glances, through madness or through silence. Dragoş Bucur (The Paper Will Be Blue) and Anamaria Marinca (4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile [4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days] (2007)) take themselves to emotional limits that are so intense that no couple will fail to identify themselves in any of the four segments. Leaving the film, the boys will defend the boys, the girls will defend the girls.

It is rare to see a film that manages to reproduce the emotional struggles within a couple with such tranquil rawness. Boogie is one of those works in which the content of what is said or done is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. What really matters is how words and actions are reproduced. In this territory, Muntean marks a departure from his earlier work through the fact that he is purely interested with how the film-matter can interact to the elements that are being shot. His intrusion in the most intimate moments in a couple’s life is shocking, truthful, and ultimately refreshing.

Returning to our original question of what made distributors to favour Boogie over The Paper Will Be Blue, we can see that the choice is not so much textual, but rather stylistic. Paper is undeniably the richer of the two pictures, but its style is so ingrained in a regional understanding of things, that as a distributor you’ll end up relying merely on the curious cinephiles interested in Romanian film-making or history. Boogie has a wider appeal. It speaks across generation and countries, and Dogwoof’s choice to distribute it is a brave one.  What the film is excellent in doing is to talk to us on a private level, unashamed to tell us that our vices are irrevocably ours, and courageous enough to chastise us for having them.