Graduation (2016) (Romanian Language)

Review

128min

Genre:       Crime, Drama

Director:    Cristian Mungiu

Cast:         Adrian Titieni, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Rares Andrici…and more

Writer:      Cristian Mungiu

-Synopsis-

After his teenage daughter is mysteriously attacked before a series of important exams— a responsible and respected doctor compromises his ethics to ensure his only child’s future, only to painfully realise he can’t control everything in this frank little Romanian family drama from writer/director Cristian Mungiu.

The perils of parenthood have always have always been a cinematic goldmine when it comes to material for engrossing and perceptive family dramas since the dawn of film, and now ‘Palme d’Or’-winning Romanian writer/director Mungiu adds his candid and nuanced cinematic family portrait to the canon with ‘Graduation’ (aka Bacalaureat)—the film which won him ‘best director’ honours at Cannes last year.

Set in small-town Romania, Adrian Titieni stars as ‘Romeo’; a local physician and respected member of the community with ambitions of higher education abroad for his daughter ‘Eliza’ (Maria-Victoria Dragus), as she approaches her all-important final exams. But after Eliza is inexplicably assaulted, Romeo’s carefully laid plans are turned upside down as he scrambles across town putting out familial fires and calling-in favours, while dealing with his own failing marriage and compromising the ethics he himself instilled in his daughter—as their relationship changes and her future becomes uncertain.

‘Graduation’ may have a crime and mystery element when it come to Eliza’s assault—which never really gets resolved but that hardly seems to matter—yet these are just narrative components in what is a subtle and simple straight up family drama. Mungiu delicately deconstructs the emotional complexities of a typically dysfunctional yet average 21st century family, which might be Romanian but will be instantly relatable to a Western audience.

Thanks to strong naturalistic performances from the entire cast—particularly Titieni and Dragus in the central father-daughter story— Mungiu paints a sombre and frank picture of a dependable but flawed man on whom many people rely, struggling to balance his wishes for a daughter about to face the harsh realities of the real world with her own hopes and dreams, all within the context of a country where ‘quid pro quo’ lingers in the heart of society. ‘Graduation’ also expertly touches upon complex human themes like unfulfilled potential, marital strife, fidelity, favouritism and nepotism, trauma and intricate relationship issues, both romantic and platonic—and does it all with refreshing openness but restraint . . . and without a hint of melodrama.

Much like the rest of his work, ‘Graduation’ is a critique of Romanian society by Mungiu. This time focusing on the disillusionment of a post Soviet era 90s generation coming to terms with the realities of a reformed country. As part of a ‘unified’ Europe but having to revise their expectations with the realisation that habits and cultures die hard—and the practice of ‘one hand washes the other’ is alive and well in this 21st century democracy. As such the film honestly tackles ethical considerations in the real world, in a morality play that sucks-in the newest Romanian generation—but despite a sense of bleakness and melancholy, the story does offer a hint of hope . . . if not resolution.

Ultimately this isn’t a quite the tense family melodrama, nor the mystery that the unexplained initial assault suggests it might become. Instead Mungiu cleverly crafts a measured and simple but simultaneously complex family drama and ‘clash of generations’ morality tale, shaded with grey instead of black and white, and instantly relatable. A warning story about the moral rabbit hole you can end up going down, in the noble effort to give your children a leg-up in a corrupt and imperfect world—something most of us here in the UK are lucky to have relatively little experience with.

The Bottom Line . . .

Whether as a father-daughter family drama or a restrained but forthright critique of a disillusioned Romanian society, ‘Graduation’ is an intricate and well-crafted piece of foreign language filmmaking that’s slightly bleak but with a hint of hope, and captivating throughout. A nuanced, often uncomfortable and inconvenient but frank portrait of parenthood, and the compromises we make for our children . . . and with our morals.

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