I got around to watching Boogie (aka Summer Holiday) by Radu Muntean who is now going around with his new film, Tuesday, After Christmas (which is also fantastic). This is not so much a film review as a little commentary on some of the themes in the film & my own history as a filmmaker. Muntean has made some excellent films starting with Furia (Fury) and now with Tuesday, After Christmas he’s scaled back A LOT in characters & on screen drama. His newer films which I think Boogie ushered in have been uber-personal & much more serious. Often times feeling like a snapshot of life. His camera finds it’s place & just shoots the acting/action. There’s something very exciting in this kind of filmmaking. It’s the stuff you’re told to avoid when you’re making films on a budget. I won’t go into it here but there’s a lot of stupid things going around about what you should & shouldn’t do as well as how you should hide your budget (as if you lie, you’ll somehow have a chance at the gold ticket & make Blair Witch money) with newer filmmakers. It’s all untrue. Just watch Boogie.
I’m also a filmmaker like Muntean but I’m also a Romanian filmmaker like him, as well. I’m an exile in the US since the 80s but I feel that the more art, film, writing, & music I seek out from back home (Romania) the more I see myself & my ideas in that world or universe. There’s this romantic notion of sentimentality that sets in to find your ‘home’ or your ‘roots’ in your 30s. Many find it by going a few decades back & others find it in the classics now many decades from when they first ‘had to read’ the classics. That’s been my reaction to Boogie & Furia & The Ticket Will Be Blue (another film by Muntean).
Why does Muntean have an obsession with infidelity & lies appearing true? Why this slow & controlled style? Such a departure from Furia. In many ways I see his work exiled in this new style that works so well & seems so original. I’ve made a home in the states & I’ve killed the last of my accent. For all intensive purposes, I’m as American as they come but I don’t see myself as American. Dragos Bucur (his male lead who is nicknamed Boogie) performance of Bodgad doesn’t see himself as cheating. He also doesn’t see his wife as suffering & cant’ help her. The film lingers in this meditation of exiles in modern life & it does so brilliantly. Nothing resolves & nothing really needs to. There’s no car chases & football game mobs in his films anymore. It works well so why add it?
I hope I get to meet Muntean & Bucur one day. Not sure what they’d think of my films but I rarely want to know what my friends think of my strange queer, violent, subversive films. Check out Summer Holiday or Boogie if you can. The payoff is wonderful & quiet reminiscent ‘The Wonder Years’ but as grown adults. It’s really lingered with me now 2 weeks after I saw it.
