In her first feature film, Chloe Okuno takes Alfred Hitchcok’s Rear Window and moves it to Bucharest, where a young New Yorker and her husband, Francis, go to live. For him it’s a homecoming, for her it’s a new world. Not knowing the language or even how to ocupy her days, Julia begins to feel the weight of her isolation, but also something else: the constant and oppressive gaze of a neighbour. But no one seems to give credit to her fears.
Chloe Okuno’s first feature film surprises us on several levels – starting, for example, with the veiled references to the Hitchcock of Rear Window. In Watcher, we follow Julia, a newly married young American woman who moves to Bucharest with her husband. The premise is very simple: the difficulties of acculturation – to the language, to the habits, to the atmosphere of the city – and everything seems different and strange. But not only that. There are also other factors – not so common – that prevent her from integrating. (Jéssica Pestana)
