When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism

Când se lasa seara peste Bucuresti sau metabolism

Corneliu Porumboiu
Romania, France | 2013 | 89 min
Language : Romanian
Subtitles : English, French

With just a few days left to shoot his film, director Paul changes his plans to spend more time with Alina, his actress. In order to do so, he pretends to rewrite part of the script, giving more space to Alina’s character, who had until then been secondary. In this skilful film, Porumboiu regales us at every turn with his obsession with cinema.

Paul is in the middle of shooting his latest film—and involved in a relationship with Alina, his lead actress. Wanting to spend more time with her, perhaps hoping their connection might outlast the shoot, he halts production and proposes a series of private rehearsals. In the script, Alina plays a secondary role, but Paul, suddenly inspired, decides to give her character more screen time.

Corneliu Porumboiu reveals nothing of the film’s plot. Working with a minimalist grammar, in around fifteen static shots, he draws us into the off-screen world of the set, those in-between moments when the camera stops rolling: a script read-through, a drive across Bucharest, a quiet dinner. From professional discussions to lovers’ quarrels, we watch the couple slowly come undone. The push and pull of power and desire between Paul and Alina—clearly tilting in the director’s favour—quietly steers the story toward tension, even rupture. When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism is, at its core, an essay on cinema itself: its magic, its illusions, its power plays—and its limits.

Katy Léna Ndiaye

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The Second Game, 2014
When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism, 2013
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Liviu’s Dream, 2004
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