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:
