Candy Crush (2015)

Candy Crush is a two-hander written by Paul Negoescu, directed by Andrei Georgescu, and acted by Alec Secăreanu and Victoria Răileanu.  Lasting 13 minutes and shot in a single take apart from a cut near the end, it follows a young couple in the minutes after they have finished making love in the man’s dingy-but-arty flat.  They get dressed, she makes a work call and he immediately picks up his laptop.  She rests on the bed and finds a long hair that isn’t hers and apparently not one of his.  He doesn’t seem at all fazed.

She goes through to the bathroom and finds a bottle of massage oil.  He says it was left by an old girlfriend, Dana, some time before, prior to getting together with her.  She probes his previous relationship and how it ended, about which he is suspiciously evasive.  He receives a text message and she asks mischievously if it is from Dana.  He says it is from his mother and gives her the phone to check.  She is using it and he asks her what she is doing, to which she replies that she is playing Candy Crush.  However, when he hands it back he sees she has deleted a number of photographs, and she says she had erased those with her in them because she does not want him to have them anymore.

He accuses her of acting strangely but she denies it.  She asks him to call her a taxi, and as they wait she asks about the expiry date of the oil.  He is caught out by the very recent manufacture, not able to explain how it could have been left by an old girlfriend months before its production, but he shrugs it off with no attempt to justify himself.  The camera pans back and forth between them, he on the bed calmly rolling and lighting a joint, which she declines, she in a chair with her arms folded.  Silence prevails until the cab arrives.

It looks like she is going to dump him for cheating but surprisingly they make arrangements to see each other the same evening.  A cut to a final shot, from the window, shows him, still smoking, looking down at her getting into the taxi and driving off.  The open ending leaves open the question whether she will forgive him, find a way to humiliate him or just stand him up; or whether he will simply ring someone else.

The clue to her attitude is in the deleted pictures, and the ephemerality of Candy Crush, a game without meaning or pleasure beyond the moment.  This is a candy crush relationship with no future, and she is clearly somewhat smarter than he is.  The sense is that the taxi is taking her away and she will not be coming back and, as he watches her, he knows it.  It is a beautifully realistic small film, economically told with subtle performances that convey the difficulties of negotiating relationships when commitment is in doubt.

The film is on YouTube, from Cinepub:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv_6SEv6HTI

Ana Lupas at Tate Modern

A room at Tate Modern is devoted to a work by Romanian artist Ana Lupas (b. 1940), titled The Solemn Process (1964-2008).  It comprises 21 metal objects, a display in harmony with the industrial setting of the Bankside power station.  There are also two large sets of sepia photographs in a 5x8 grid at either end of the gallery showing straw objects of varying shapes, many like doughnut rings.  Some are shown in conjunction with individuals, but these are not your typical agricultural products.

The shape is the key, as the metal objects share similar dimensions to some of the objects in the photographs.  In the first phase of the project, 1964-74, Lupas worked collaboratively with villagers in Transylvania to create these oddly-shaped straw and clay sculptures using techniques based on those employed to make harvest festival wreaths and in house building.  The results were photographed at various locations in the open air.  Unfortunately in the early- and mid-1970s the worsening political and economic climate halted their production.

Between 1980 and 1985 Lupas attempted to reverse the decay to which the organic structures were subject.  This was not successful so in the third phase, between 1985 and 2008, the objects were encased in metal to mimic the shape of the originals.  It may not have preserved them but it did hide the decay and gave an idea of the original shapes.  The final products bore a resemblance to the original sculptures in that respect, but nothing else, and might be seen as a betrayal of the original impulse to create an artwork using ephemeral materials that would eventually exist only in the photographic record and the memories of its witnesses.

What is surprising is that the initial stage was carried out during the Communist period, when one might have expected such works to be frowned on, with depictions of peasants producing something which could actually be eaten favoured by the regime.  On the other hand, she was demonstrating that ordinary everyday objects and processes could be utilised in the name of art, whether playful or, as here, solemn.  One wonders what the locals who had the wreaths hanging around made of them; they are missing from the narrative.

1,000 Places to See Before You Die, by Patricia Schultz

This hefty 2003 travel book (a new edition was published in 2011) contains nearly 1,000 pages covering the world, or more accurately some of the world.  It is divided into eight sections: Europe; Africa; the Middle East; Asia; Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands; the United States and Canada; Latin America; the Caribbean, Bahamas and Bermuda.  It is heavily weighted in favour of the United States, which has nearly 200 pages devoted to it.  The whole of Asia gets less than a hundred.

Romania is represented by only two locations, occupying less than a couple of pages: ‘The painted monasteries of Moldavia’ (subtitled ‘the Sistine Chapels of the East’), and what it risibly terms ‘Count Dracula’s Castle’, i.e. Bran (subtitled ‘In a Lost Corner of Central Europe’).  The latter section is more about Dracula than Bran Castle, and calls Transylvania ‘a time-locked country that never seems to have felt the 20th century’s touch, never mind the 21st’s’.

Naturally any list of the 1,000 places one must definitely see before clogs are popped is going to be arbitrary to an extent, and there will be disagreements about what has been included and omitted.  However, for such a sizeable country with much to offer this all seems inadequate, but then the region generally is not well served by Schultz.  The Czech Republic has 7 entries, Hungary 4 and Poland 3.  Belarus, Bulgaria, Slovakia and the western Balkans are clearly not worth visiting at all.

While much of the book’s content will inevitably date, places like the painted monasteries and Bran Castle are not going anywhere so it is still of some use and may stimulate a few travel ideas.  But Romania, among others, deserves better.  Really, I cannot understand why anyone would want to shell out for this book when there are so many up-to-date country-specific guides available, all of which contain recommendations of places that are worth a visit, and without the implicit suggestion that if you die before you see them, your life will somehow have been unfulfilled.

The Man Who Cycled the World, by Mark Beaumont

In 2007-08, Swindon-born Mark Beaumont circumnavigated the world by bicycle in 195 days, beginning and ending in Paris.  He had travelled unsupported over 18,000 miles through 20 countries and broken the Guinness world record by 81 days.  Having lost the record in 2010, he regained it in 2017 with a supported circumnavigation which took less than 79 days, a record he still holds.

The Man Who Cycled the World is an account of his first trip cycling/circling the world, published in 2009.  It includes a few pages on the leg through eastern Romania (pp. 97-101) on days 16-19 of his journey, crossing the border from Ukraine. Entering Romania was a process he found easier than getting into and out of Ukraine, a country that for some reason he thought was not part of Europe.  The book is really an amplified logbook with the emphasis on the bicycle and his physical state rather than the places he passed through (‘Don’t ask me what Ukraine looks like,’ he says, ‘as I was staring two metres in front of my wheel all day’).

He seems to have seen more of Romania, which he found attractive: ‘great roads, beautiful villages and scenic rolling hills.’  As soon as he arrived, while studying his map a local shook hands and said ‘welcome to Romania!’  His first stop was Fălticeni and to get there he cycled along roads shared with horse-drawn carts, shepherds in the fields.  Arriving in town and needing an hotel, he asked a police officer in a car who said ‘follow me’ and escorted Beaumont 2km to one (albeit the hotelier was ‘grumpy’).  Beaumont says he was ‘impressed’ by Romania.

The riding was generally straightforward to the town of Roman, though he got lost in Bacău, and he camped in a field near Adjud.  The following day was through more industrial areas, reaching Buzău in the afternoon.  At Râmnicu Sărat he stopped for some supplies and a man standing next to him at the counter took them from him and paid, mentioning something about a bicicletă.  He finished the day in a field near Urziceni.  The temperature was rising and he was conscious of saddle sores.

The next day he passed by Slobozia.  He was feeling weak, having had a small breakfast as he had run out of Romanian currency, but he pushed on to the Bulgarian border.  Unfortunately the border control he arrived at was not open so he was directed to go back up the road and cross the Danube by ferry.  He did not have the fare, however the attendant waved him on to what was essentially a floating platform and he crossed free of charge.  He was close to the border, and entered Bulgaria, en route to Turkey and beyond, in less than a minute.

In the section of photographs there is one of a horse-drawn cart in Romania with the caption ‘iconic images of a world I would have loved to explore more, but the clock never stopped.’