Cannes. Boogie.

"Drinking, smoking and whoring ain't what they used to be in Boogie [site], Radu Muntean's attenuated reflection on friends whose paths since high school have taken starkly different routes," writes Jay Weissberg for Variety.

"Playing on themes similar to Old Joy, Muntean uses his cool yet sympathetically observational eye to chart the distance between a responsible family man and his long-lost buddies who have yet to grow up - problem is, auds are aware that the guys are losers long before the protag. Though more universal in theme than the helmer's superior The Paper Will Be Blue travel is unlikely to be widespread outside fest berths."

"Surprisingly, like most latter-day realism, it has the same intention as those most artificial of Hollywood films: to make the spectator unaware they are watching a movie," writes Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook. "But so what? In the cinema, the quotidian is never just quotidian, but the regular is just that. And so Boogie proceeds, and once we've guessed its rhythm and intonation, gives no discerning reason why any five minutes of it is any more or less interesting than any other five minutes. So congratulations, by effacing the sense of filmmaking and entering the every-day, here's a movie that is indeed everyday."

For the Boston Globe's Ty Burr, this "is the first New Romanian film I've seen in a while that didn't utterly bowl me over; it's perfectly okay without breaking much new ground.... The scenes between the three pals and the prostitute have a tawdry honesty, and Anamaria Marinca (the discovery of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days) is believably worn down as Boogie's wife, but where films like 4 Months or The Death of Mr Lazarescu use grubby realism to accrete powerful meaning over the long haul, Boogie just feels like, well, a long haul."

Directors' Fortnight.

Update, 5/18: "The film's discoloured, unattractive look seems a deliberate attempt to reflect present-day Romanian reality but it doesn't make for easy viewing," writes Dan Fainaru in Screen Daily. "The same goes for the pace, set by the lethargy of the characters who aren't particularly forceful. On the other hand, the Ceausescu era is cleverly shown slipping into the past, and Boogie underlines the first, tentative steps of the country into a capitalist system."

Update, 5/19: "Boogie is the kind of long-take, slice-of-life movie that gives long-take, slice-of-life movies a bad name." Peter Brunette in the Hollywood Reporter.

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Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 17, 2008 7:17 AM