Petre tells the police that the elderly man he was taking care of died that morning. Along the way back to the house, he tries to handle the logistics. But he has a surprise waiting for him.
The premise is already customary in so-called New Romanian Cinema: it involves a generational gap, an encounter with a authority figure of the State (the police), and a necro-bureaucratic imbroglio (an inheritance). Only Marian Farcut films the banality of an extraordinary event with the comic dryness of a documentarian discovering the perfect timing of opportunistic and authoritarian provincialism. There is even a certain minimalist aplomb in this debut film, in which the director develops a mise en scène that manages to go from maximum frankness to the subtle exercise of out-of-field framing, long takes, and the playful depth of field. Simplicity reigns, and from it springs a comedy of deceit capable of cheating death itself. (Ricardo Vieira Lisboa)
