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Periferic (Outbound)

Romania

Directed by: Bogdan George Apetri

Cinematography: Marius Panduru

Story by: Cristian Mungiu, Ioana Uricaru/ Screenplay by: Bogdan George Apetri and Tudor Voican

Starring: Ana Ularu, Andi Vasluianu, Mimi Branescu

Apetri’s debut film is a deliberately rough and disciplined character portrait with an acute social consciousness and surprising cinematic nuances. This is a bruised yet sober allegory of contemporary life on the outskirts of Romanian society that’s both redemptive for its character but also subtle in its measured allusion to tabus like prostitution, crime and orphans. And Ana Ularu is excellently nuanced in her portrayal of Matilda, never nostalgic, always energetic and surprising.

Filmed in a docu-realist style with subtle jump cuts and playful close-ups, Outbound follows Matilda Lazar on a day’s leave from prison half-way through a six year sentence, from dawn to dusk. Released to attend her mother’s funeral in the countryside, she plans to leave the country and settle her dues along the way. The film is structured according to her encounters with the three men that weigh down her future. Her estranged brother Andrei, whose life is managed by his religious wife, her ex-boyfriend Paul, a hotel owner turned playboy, and her son Toma, whom Paul has sent to an orphanage during her prison-time. In the end, the young boy also has to make a decision that will affect both their futures.

From the beginning, the sense of entrapment and repetition is emphasized in the film, not only by the long shots of corridors, tunnels and endless journeys, but also through symbols placed along the way. The ending is somehow predictable yet nevertheless surprising. This is where Apetri feels most at home; it’s the subtle plot nuances and haunting images that really craft a contemporary allegory about freedom and redemption. Matilda rarely speaks; she’s rough-looking, a vagabond with a short-temper yet candid and honest. She is bruised by prison-life yet full of hope at the prospects of her escape. As we follow her journey from one prison into another, Apetri reveals the circumstances of this outbound life.

Apetri skilfully employs his dramatic tricks, where characters slip in an out like ghosts of this severed world. The film never rests for transparency and embraces its subject matter with plenty of energy and thrill. There’s a particularly engaging scene which takes place in the outskirts of the city, on a fast plain under the torrid sun, in which Paul delivers his far too young girlfriend to a man who almost appears as a shadow, filmed through the side-window of a car. Despite the heat and a full black suit, he’s not at all sweaty, his glistening green eyes full of threat. At other times, we notice the willingness of Toma and Matilda to care for each other in a particularly moving scene; the mother and her son smoking and gazing out the window of a train, occasionally blowing smoke in each other’s faces to pass the time. It is these shots from behind a window, within a car, behind the bars of a prison that really haunt the film throughout, in its somewhat grey color palette.

Yet Apetri’s film never gets lost in its own drama, and its uneven pacing, unexpected cuts, and engaging character portraits make for a thrilling ride. Referential to films like Prophert and The Silence of Lorna, Outbound is an impressive debut that thrillingly raw and satirical, in love with its character nevertheless.

Tagged: Bogdan George Apetri, East End Film Festival, Film, Romania