In the latest film that
Adrian Sitaru directed, based on the screenplay written by Claudia și
Adrian Silișteanu (consultant –
Răzvan Rădulescu), there is a scene, apparently without any importance, one of those scenes that seems quite plain, an innocent intrusion of an uninvited guest,
that you can`t stop, since the chance brought together two people, prisoners of the same space. On his way, by the night train, to the North of the country – the place of the decisive encounter of the protagonist, Radu (
Tudor Aaron Istodor) with the French journalists to whom he had sold a hot topic, the fixer shares the couchette of the sleeping wagon with a man who is eager to confess all kinds of things. The slow, proud man from Ardeal (“I`m nobody`s fool”) tells Radu his story, of his right hand that he had lost in an accident, of the prosthesis that now rests in the luggage rack and of the funny doctor (“…that fucking doctor”) who lured him into using it by means of a new method, bringing him some “magazines with women”. For a few good seconds, the prosthesis lies in front of the camera, flagellating our eyes, as if the lifeless object should not be forgotten. Maybe it is not for no reason that the owner called it “the ghost hand”. I went back to that story, I felt drawn back to it, as the film unfolded towards its target – getting the precious interview (that Radu had promised to the foreign journalists) with the young prostitute from Bistrița, sent by her pimp in France and sent by the French authorities back to her country. “The ghost hand” seems to be the embodiment of so many life stories that nobody asked for and that nobody needs, while for the press scoop that the fixer and his people run after, there are so many people that get in motion: relatives, state clerks, police chiefs, etc. And all of that is done in order to get into its toughest core, so that it may be offered impudently to the consumers. The soul of the abused person doesn`t even count. Once they could hardly get their interview with Anca, the 14 year old victim (Diana Spătărescu is quite touching),
Axel Montini (Mehdi Nebbou), the beneficiary of Radu`s good services, to whom he keeps on reminding “You are not a journalist, you are just a fixer” and the operator Serge (Nicolas Wanczycki) go further: they want cinical details about the poor girl`s recruiting, about her first day in Paris (as if she had been a tourist!) and in order to finish
en beauté, they ask her to repeat a few times in French, the end line that they think will crown their work: "
La pipe et l' amour - 50 euros". It is the moment when we feel we are out of air, the screen itself seems it can`t take the cruelty anymore, the camera goes out in the almost deserted street, in the open space, panning the houses, the trees. Between the two narrative parts, Adrian Sitaru,one of our most subtle filmmakers – he either experiments things like in his previous films, playing with
the looks, or sends us on the surface of a slippery reality, governed by the camera eye, which is the case of this film – builds other small adjacent stories, carried by female characters
that are exceptionally well depicted and played. Each of them has the part of the girl victim`s protector, in their own naïve, aggressive or sharp way. Ancuța`s mother (Anca Hanu) – looks very fearful, slightly absent; no muscle moves on her face, she is hard to be taken away from what`s keeping her near the stove, or from the hardships she`s had to endure as a woman who raised her children by herself, with a disarming good faith in the things that concerns her daughter who had been forced to sell her body (“I thought she was working”). The girl`s sister (Alma Căldare) is very tough and unwilling to waste a minute with the intruders; she is even ready to fight with them (“Get your camera out of here, I want you to disappear in an instant, or else I`ll crack you over the head”). The Reverend Mother from the monastery where Anca took shelter (Cristina Toma) – is modern, intellectual, with a slightly disdainful metallic sharpness in her eyes, with a sense of the shades (“It`s not out of reticence, but out of prudence” – she corrects the guy speaking). The visitors have a rock in front of them. These are some scenes of a great intensity, carefully gradated, where we discover Sitaru`s talent of concatenating different truths that – according to the paradox – “he doesn`t search for, but is found by them”). While the mission of the French crew comes closer to the desired end, Radu, starts feel
ing more and more sick and tired of it and his enthusiasm makes signs of exhaustion. We get to see him translating more and more reluctantly, thinking about little Matei (Cristian Ilinca), the swim loving son of his girlfriend ((
Andreea Vasile); he left the little one a bit upset, after a short slightly pedagogical misunderstanding. With this first leading role that he plays in a feature film, Tudor Aaron Istodor ads a special male character to the male heroes gallery that probably we won`t forget easily for the elegance of his frailty, for the dignity of his disappointments and for his final non-adherence to a profession such as the journalism, which especially in these days, is impossible to keep away from the sordid dimension.
