‘Omcâine‘ (2022 – the English distribution title is ‘Man and Dog‘) is the ambitious debut of a director who is making his first feature film late in his career. Stefan Constantinescu is no novice in cinematography, he is a visual artist and has so far created short films and a very interesting documentary about the evolution of Romania seen through the lens of Dacia cars. Settled in Sweden for over a decade, Constantinescu worked for several years on the script for this film together with two co-writers: one Romanian and one Swedish. The pandemic intervened, but the filmmakers and producers did not let themselves be discouraged by the difficulties and challenges of the period, on the contrary, adding the restrictions of the pandemic and integrating them very skillfully into the narrative. The result is a psychological drama that is quite special and different in the landscape of Romanian cinema, a little dreamlike, a little dystopian, with many interesting cinematic elements. The film’s release towards the end of the pandemic, in competition with a lot of other films waiting in the fall of 2022 to enter cinemas, was difficult and I have the impression that undeservedly few people heard about this film and saw it in theaters.
The story takes place in 2020. The fall of the Iron Curtain and the opening of borders after 1989 created a huge Romanian diaspora in Western Europe. Among the millions of Romanians who left in search of better material conditions is Doru, the film’s main hero. Having left for Sweden with a team of Romanian technicians, he receives an anonymous text message on his phone informing him that Nicoleta, his wife, is cheating on him with another man. Overcome with jealousy, Doru returns. Everything seems normal at home, where Nicoleta and their teenage daughter seem to be going about their usual lives. Doru investigates, becomes obsessive. His friends react first with amusement, then intrigued, trying to calm him down. Is there any truth in his suspicions? The obsession intensifies. All these Take place in the days when the borders of Europe are closed due to the pandemic. It seems an Othello and Desdemona-like drama. Does it need to end in tragedy?
Many of Stefan Constantinescu‘s cinematic ideas are a continuation of the video artist’s direction from the previous short films. Doru has a dog, left in the care of his mother, which in a first scene of the film, perhaps in a dream, he searches for in a forest. Later, in the real plot, it plays an important role – an unconditional friend of the hero, like any dog, but also a sensor of the hero’s connection with reality. Then, the bus from Sweden that Doru is traveling on enters a dense fog and in the next scene the hero is … on the outskirts of the Romanian harbour city of Constanța. Doru and Nicoleta have difficulty communicating, they don’t know how to express their feelings in words or to directly and honestly resolve their misunderstandings of their life as a married couple. The two main scenes between them are played, one without words (the dance scene), the other against words. In the latter, the woman, tired of her husband’s pressure, ‘confesses’ in obscene details about the alleged extramarital affair. However, we only hear her voice, because the camera is fixed on him, on his reactions and the way he understands the truth from the series of untruths he is hearing. A formidable scene. Bogdan Dumitrache and Ofelia Popii appear in the main roles and play very well. She demonstrate on screen what a great cinema actress she is too. We also see Dan Nutu again for a too short time. The super-star of Romanian cinema in the ’60s and ’70s – since leaving Romania – in the early ’80s has starred in exactly four films. Maybe Romanian filmmakers will give him the opportunity of a comeback towards the end of his career. ‘Omcâine‘ is a slightly paradoxical film. It has many beautiful and interesting ideas, but these are not connected into a coherent whole. Maybe it is precisely here that one feels that Stefan Constantinescu is still a debutant. I am waiting for his next movies.