The Happiest Girl in the World (2009)
(Cea mai fericitã fatã din lume)
Country: ROM/NL/FR/JAP
Technical: col 99m
Director: Radu Jude
Cast: Andreea Bosneag, Violeta Haret-Popa, Vasile Muraru, Serban Pavlu
Synopsis:
A girl's parents take her to Bucharest to perform in a fruit juice commercial featuring the car she has won in a competition, but insist she sign it over to them as capital for their guest house venture.
Review:
Jude's gentle satire here explores the implications of the word 'luckiest', which the protagonist repeatedly forgets to include in her increasingly hurried sales pitch for the camera. Luck is seen as something to be exploited by everyone for their own advantage, save the girl herself, who wears an ever more downcast expression. Implicit is the selfishness of a society relatively new to the pitfalls of a consumer economy, where it is ever so easy for parents to lose sight of what really counts for their children. The film repeats its point somewhat ad infinitum, and delivers not the expected sting in the tail but simply trails off, the daughter having struck some sort of putative bargain with her grasping father. The basis of their relationship henceforth is all too clear.
(Cea mai fericitã fatã din lume)
Country: ROM/NL/FR/JAP
Technical: col 99m
Director: Radu Jude
Cast: Andreea Bosneag, Violeta Haret-Popa, Vasile Muraru, Serban Pavlu
Synopsis:
A girl's parents take her to Bucharest to perform in a fruit juice commercial featuring the car she has won in a competition, but insist she sign it over to them as capital for their guest house venture.
Review:
Jude's gentle satire here explores the implications of the word 'luckiest', which the protagonist repeatedly forgets to include in her increasingly hurried sales pitch for the camera. Luck is seen as something to be exploited by everyone for their own advantage, save the girl herself, who wears an ever more downcast expression. Implicit is the selfishness of a society relatively new to the pitfalls of a consumer economy, where it is ever so easy for parents to lose sight of what really counts for their children. The film repeats its point somewhat ad infinitum, and delivers not the expected sting in the tail but simply trails off, the daughter having struck some sort of putative bargain with her grasping father. The basis of their relationship henceforth is all too clear.
(Cea mai fericitã fatã din lume)
Country: ROM/NL/FR/JAP
Technical: col 99m
Director: Radu Jude
Cast: Andreea Bosneag, Violeta Haret-Popa, Vasile Muraru, Serban Pavlu
Synopsis:
A girl's parents take her to Bucharest to perform in a fruit juice commercial featuring the car she has won in a competition, but insist she sign it over to them as capital for their guest house venture.
Review:
Jude's gentle satire here explores the implications of the word 'luckiest', which the protagonist repeatedly forgets to include in her increasingly hurried sales pitch for the camera. Luck is seen as something to be exploited by everyone for their own advantage, save the girl herself, who wears an ever more downcast expression. Implicit is the selfishness of a society relatively new to the pitfalls of a consumer economy, where it is ever so easy for parents to lose sight of what really counts for their children. The film repeats its point somewhat ad infinitum, and delivers not the expected sting in the tail but simply trails off, the daughter having struck some sort of putative bargain with her grasping father. The basis of their relationship henceforth is all too clear.