In Sundays on Leave, director Nicolae Caranfil has crafted a refined and lively comedy—one that plays exquisitely with our sense of how to tell funny stories from our occasionally mundane and moody lives. Through a web of three such separate but interwoven lives—Christina the high school girl, Dino the actor and Horatiu the soldier—three narratives emerge, each from a distinct and clever point of view. Christina is an actress and a dreamer. Her vision of the future lies not in Bucharest, but in Paris, London or even America. Dino travels throughout Romania with his theater company and finds himself at a crossroads in the small military town where Christina lives. Horatiu wants to make love to Christina, but he may instead have to settle for 16 months in the Romanian Army, complete with sexual and intellectual frustrations. As the three stories unfold, everyone grows and changes. Christina defines her own sense of sexual independence, while Dino and Horatiu have their self-confidence undermined. These three overlapping destinies—in a structure reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon—come full circle when each character becomes his or her own hero, choosing to act on a dream. Ultimately, each winds up crossing a frontier different from any they might ever have expected.
Marc Smolowitz |