In the bottom right-hand corner of the opening shot of Graduation is somebody – we never see who – digging themselves into a deep hole. This throwaway image brilliantly sums up the plight of Romeo (Adrian Titieni) and of the country itself in this scalding satire of Romanian corruption.
A doctor, father, husband and philanderer, Romeo is a man besieged even before an incident sends his life into a tailspin. Barely a scene goes by without at least one niggling unanswered phone ringing just out of shot. In a typically bold directorial decision, Cristian Mungiu, who in 2008 guided audiences through a Ceaușescu-era maze of underhand payoffs with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, allows the most crucial phone call of the film to play out in a different room while the camera follows Romeo’s lover elsewhere. The call brings bad news – Romeo’s teenage daughter has been assaulted on her way to school. Her final exams, and her university scholarship, are in jeopardy. Romeo stacks up favours and bribes like a precarious house of cards, and in doing so becomes part of the cronyism and corruption that he hopes she will escape. Superbly acted, and photographed and edited with forensic precision, this is Romanian cinema at its best.
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