Mungiu's 'Fjord' Disappoints at Cannes, 2007 Palme Winner Loses Focus in Norway-Set Drama
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · May 18
Mungiu's 'Fjord' Disappoints at Cannes, 2007 Palme Winner Loses Focus in Norway-Set Drama
9 articles · Updated · The Guardian · May 18
Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes entry is judged anticlimactic and underpowered, with the review saying the Romanian director’s latest film never turns its family-crisis premise into real revelation or suspense.
Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve play strict Christian parents whose children are removed after school staff spot bruises, setting off a police case shaped by language barriers, cultural tension and suspected abuse.
The film briefly complicates audience sympathies by contrasting Mihai’s cold authority with officials portrayed as smug and a system possibly biased against Christians or Romanians.
That moral ambiguity still fails to land, the review argues, because the court case remains unresolved and a ferry-terminal ending leaves key relationships—including the two teenage girls’ bond—thinly developed.
Mungiu, who won Cannes’ Palme d’Or in 2007 for '4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,' is cited as part of a wider festival pattern of auteurs losing sharpness in foreign-language coproductions.
Do celebrated directors lose their unique vision when they film outside their home country and language?
When a state saves children from their parents, is it protection or a form of cultural persecution?