It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Blistering performances.

The Romanian New Wave continues with Călin Peter Netzer's "Poziția copilului" ("Child's Pose" in English). Luminița Gheorghiu plays an affluent woman whose son accidentally kills a boy in a traffic accident. The movie looks at a number of topics: corruption, emotional manipulation and parent-child relationships. All of these add up to a general focus on the state of affairs in Romania, as the woman seeks to pull strings to get her son a lenient prosecution, and tries to force the victim's family to forgive her son.One of the most effective lines is "What parents can't accomplish they achieve through their children." One of the most obvious examples is shows like "American Idol". But beyond that, we see the woman chide her son for his unwillingness to grow up, even though she kept an overly tight leash on him most of his life.All in all I recommend the movie. Shot in a naturalistic style, it hits you hard. I hope that Romania turns out more of these.

Film poor, slow, monotonous that revolves around a thin and bland plot. In one word: negligible. Romanian cinema is worth and overestimated, it is increasingly leverage on the contrast between social classes and on the struggle for survival but through scripts and rhythms really ridiculous. Mungiu, Netzer .... are technically second-rate filmmakers who tell stories insipid and boring. however deserves a special mention Luminita Gheorghiu engaged in a good actress performance, but obviously is not enough. Putting in a pot, piety, poverty, greed, corruption, indolence, you get romanian cinema served up as neorealism but in fact a disgusting food.

The movie is about action and reaction in life, responsibility and why parents shouldn't try to stifle and spoil their children. More importantly, it is about control and how love understood wrongly as transfer of responsibility and even consciousness leaves the son in the story weak and defenseless, incapable to face maturely the consequences of his actions. on the other hand, He can't do that because he's been taught not to take any responsibility for anything. This does not mean however the mother is the only guilty person. Her love for her son has translated into complete takeover of his individual responsibility. He realizes he must fight her and get back control over his life too late. Love is no excuse for that. The movie is dynamic and to the point. The characters are well defined.

I happened to catch a screening of the film attended by the director and some of the actors, followed by a short Q&A. This sort of effort is part of a greater plan to bring appraised Romanian films closer to the Romanian audience, while also creating an association with the people responsible for their success, more often than not "against the odds". What sets Netzer's film apart from some of the other recent Romanian works of cinema is its sardonic humor which works best when it's aimed at the characters and not at some of the pervasive practices of society. I've personally always felt that personal stories, meaning character stories, always came in second to some grand piece of social commentary, usually on the communist background of the country, in most of the acclaimed Romanian cinema of the 21st century. Not to say that such commentary lacks relevance, but there's just more to modern life than its dark red heritage.Of course, "Pozitia Copilului" is deeply rooted in antics which one could call symptomatic of Romania and as a means of characterization, the backdrop is justifiable. Occasionally though, when certain aspects come across a bit too hard pressed, they do a disservice to the otherwise excellent balance of a difficult story. This does in no way undermine the beautifully detailed portrait of the film's main character, a highly controlling, bossy, arrogant, mean-spirited mother whose faults go quite a way to being redeemed by the passionate dedication with which she tries to protect her son, who had killed a child in a car accident. The ambivalence is so finely portrayed by Luminita Gheorghiu that both the moments of involuntary humor and the moments of pure drama work just as well.It's ironic that Mrs. Gheorghiu also played in "Moartea Domnului Lazarescu", a film I found to be close at heart with "Pozitia Copilului", in that it relies heavily on a complex central character and its critique is subtle, yet scathing. I'd go so far as to say that these kind of films, while still dominated by a type of post-modernist bleakness, can lead a shift of focus to the greater importance of characters as individuals in Romanian movies, not only as symbol stand-ins.