Tudor Pojnicsan’s 2021 short film has a cast of two, Carla Graur and Dragoș Pleșa, though Pleșa carries the bulk of the action. It is completely without dialogue, and the viewer’s inability to penetrate further than the images in attempting to probe their ambiguities fuels a sense of unease.
A young man is out in the woods taking
photographs, the sound of birds filling the air. A smooth transition to the lobby of his block
is accompanied by an electronic score which becomes increasingly unsettling. In his flat he drinks a glass of milk and examines
the images on a laptop. He clearly lives
alone, and the flat is sparsely-furnished.
Economically, Pojnicsan has established the man’s isolation and focus on
photography.
As part of his routine, he checks his
mailbox in the lobby on his return. One
day he finds a letter, and the camera lingers on the boxes, suggesting they
will play a significant role. The man
glances at the letter, but is more interested in studying the photographs on
his computer.
Another day a second letter arrives but he
does not immediately open it, instead looking thoughtful while drinking milk,
before turning to his photographs. A
series of letters arrive; they are unsealed and we see they have no address, so
presumably are hand-delivered. He tries
to ignore the box, but is drawn in the night to see if there is a letter, which
there is. After lying in bed reading it,
he holds it against his chest.
One day as he checks his box a woman comes
down the stairs and goes to hers a little way along the row. We remember we saw her doing the same the
first time he looked in his box – when there was no letter present. She hands him a letter, and in the next scene
we see them in bed together. We assume
they were love letters and have served their purpose.
But while he is asleep she looks at them,
not something one would expect if she had written them herself. When he comes into the block there is no
letter in the box, and he is withdrawn as the pair eat, shaking her hand off as
she touches him. Are the letters after
all from someone else? He continues to
look for letters in the box as he comes into the block, appearing anxious.
Now he is eating on his own, so it seems
she has left him. He breaks his glass,
and for the only time, apart from in the wood, we hear diegetic sound as it
smashes. Then he trashes the flat before
lying on the floor clutching the letters.
Recovering, he gets on with life.
But on his way out he finds a letter in the box, this time with a stamp.
He takes it to the woods where a woman is standing
in the distance. Resealing the letter, he
walks towards the spot where she had been (when the camera indicates his point
of view, she is no longer visible). Is
it the woman with whom he slept, and is it she who wrote the letters? We have no insight into his interior life,
and can only guess at what might happen next.
Whatever it is will happen out of sight.
Yet as he disappears into the distant
trees, a hint that the resolution, whatever form it takes, will be positive is
provided by the score. Birdsong and the
electronic music coexist briefly in the wood before the latter fades out and we
are left with only natural sounds. Real
life trumps the artificial; direct experience is better than the mediated.
The film is available on the Cinepub
YouTube platform:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eewKj_VmMMo
