Stop playing the game: “Another Love Building” – film review

       I ended my review on the first Love Building with a wish that sounded a bit like this: “Looking forward to the next ones!” Though many previous experiences taught us that trying to repeat the successful pattern most of the times have been disappointing if not somehow on the rack; the enthusiasm of the happy beginning carried us too high up and we couldn`t help thinking that Once is not enough. So, a first success is not enough to carry on. With the same charming characters caught in a game where the people join a love training session, which is a very big deal, as everybody knows. Since the area is endless, all of us assumed that there was enough room for Another Love Building. I sadly realize that the wind of inspiration of the three screen writers, Oana Răsuceanu, Ana Agopian and Iulia Rugină (who was also the film director), proved to have blown out. The film doesn`t seem to be the product of a single mind and heart, but looks more like a Spanish inn where everybody brought what was left at home. Only that the food (please read as the small life episodes which once were so fresh and smart that followed an unusual maieutics) don`t make a feast. The three trainers seem more and more entangled in their own unmendable sentimental troubles, Dragoș Bucur`s ironical  humor, Dorian Boguță`s slowness, Alexandru Papadopol`s lightheadedness don`t have the same effect, because many times, the situations they are in, are pretty forced. The third one seems to be moonstruck when he is told that he will be a father. There is a slightly bored air about the couples that are enlisted in the Love Building program, though the suggested themes are interesting and a bit more down to earth than in the previous sessions. They talk about routine and sex, about jealousy and impotence, erotic transfer, somebody talks about the erectile dysfunction. In order not to completely banish the necessary touch of poetry, the participants are asked to remember the moment in their lives “when they made love the first time.” For the ironical touch up to date, a member of the Parliament, a politician is brought in the action; his caricature-like type matches the ridicule of his bad-mannered wife, but not with the whole picture. Last, we should also mention that in the winter setting of a Bran caught near the year ending holidays, with its tourist attractions, there is a vague feeling of anxious waiting, somehow between Godot and The Government Inspector. They speak about the imminent arrival of a foreign specialist, a certain Mr.Anderson. Knowing the cast, I guessed he couldn`t be played by any other actor than Ben Cross, the remarkable English actor from the Oscar winning Chariots of Fire. For those who are not film lovers, he would be only a distinguished grey-haired man. For both categories, bringing him into the story meant introducing a hilarious story about his dear native Maine. In an urge of patriotic mobilization, Papadopol brings the even funnier story about Vlad Țepeș. A kind of an ending that crowns the work. I admire the three filmmakers too much, not to end the review that is dedicated to them with a piece of advice: “Get to work, you are far too talented to let yourself get lost among other games.”