Old wine in a new bottle, this 2013 drama applies the aesthetic of the Romanian New Wave to a familiar tale about a small-town widower (Victor Rebengiuc, in the sort of role Walter Matthau often played in his later years) reassessing his life after most of his property gets destroyed by a flood. Director Tudor Cristian Jurgiu demonstrates the same exacting sense of time and space as Puiu, Porumboiu, et al, and the rigorous style ameliorates the sentimentality of the script, which has the man’s estranged son returning home after more than a decade in Japan. In Japanese and Romanian with subtitles.
The Japanese Dog
1 hour 23 min • 2013
