People are voting emotionally.

Brilliant and touching

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This is a "slice of life" film. To give you an example, Fight Club is about the few months in which the main character establishes his first fight club and network of franchises across the country. It's a story that spans quite some time, so some parts are compressed - the highlights are shown, the rest is implied or shown in montages.Some films focus on a much thinner slice, the peak of the story. This story attempts that. We are not to see the beginning of the relationship, the honeymoon phase, the stagnation and then the affair. We are introduced to the characters already in the middle of the affair period.The "peak" of this story is the time Paul has to make a decision. Without spoiling the story (not that it could be spoiled), Paul has to chose between these two women, supposedly, according to the synopsis. With deductive reasoning, you can already guess that he is not the one who says "you have to make a choice" - this man is a cheater, his actions already show that he wants both at the same time. So you can guess that this "make a choice" ultimatum was made to him by someone.But there isn't really much of a choice. We are shown his two lives, a completely normal, uneventful domestic life with his wife and child on one hand and a new relationship on the other, with more passion, since it's the start. In short, one has brushing teeth, shaving and quiet dinners and the other has pillow talk.This is all from the photos, there are no spoilers here.Almost everything is in real time, meaning, we're not given the highlights. You know how pillow talk lasts 1 minute in films, whereas in real life it's 15? Don't worry about it, here you get the whole 15. You know how waiting rooms last a long time whereas in films it's seconds? Well, it's all in here. Do you want to see people Christmas shopping? In real time? It's here. It's all long takes.This film is a short film with little story fattened up with banal scenes that add nothing.Surely some will see it as some sort of Romanian version of American Beauty, i.e. the middle class dream is not all that great, but this film is seriously overrated. The reviews are all glowing, but it only has 7/10. The number of people giving it 9 and above is almost equal to the number of people giving it 5 and under. Consider that there is some pre-filtering going on. The average person would not watch a Romanian film to begin with, so the only people voting are people used to more minimalist foreign films. It's still not good though.The cinema of Romania has experienced many difficult decades, where filmmakers were not allowed to tell the truth about what was happening in their country. This film does not have any of these shackles. Instead, the director showed the real Romania, reality as it is, without a pinch of salt to boost the entertainment value.Either add a bit of spice to the film to make it more enjoyable or cut it smarter to only show the best parts of this normal life. Even if I were to edit my own boring life, I'd be able to make it interesting by editing out the boring parts.This film does not only not cut out the boring parts, it is just the boring parts. Those parts are the main focus and that's why it's getting such high praise from people who hate car-chase scenes and roof top fights. I hate car chases too, but I don't want to see a complete, uncut dental appointment from parking to exit.My friends did not finish this film but I did. They didn't even bother asking what happened later.Don't say you weren't warned.

I questioned whether I wanted to see yet another examination of a failed marriage, but I am glad I watched this. The thing that sets it apart is its total believability. There are no high voltage fireworks as in many movies such as a Bergman film, where the partners rip the flesh off of each other by rehashing all possible old wounds. Instead we get a drama that plays almost like a documentary.I confess that about half way through I was feeling that things were going a bit slow by concentrating on routine daily chores, like getting groceries, shopping for presents, taking the daughter to the dentist, and so forth. But this served to establish that the life of the couple Paul and Adriana had devolved into little more than daily routine. You could almost extrapolate what their lives would be until the end. And I think this is what Paul was seeing when the opportunity to change course presented itself by his striking up a relationship with the attractive Raluca. This is not to say that there are no dramatic scenes to be had later in the film, but those scenes are well motivated by what has gone before. The scene where Paul tells Adriana the truth is exceptionally well acted and is a bit painful to watch, since it is so honestly scripted. You may come away feeling that Paul has made a very bad, or even deplorable, decision, but you understand his motivations and realize he is not a monster. I think this movie captures the essence of thousands of similar stories that are being played out every day in real life.

The Romanian film "Marti, Dupa Craciun" (2010) was shown in the United States with the title, "Tuesday, After Christmas." The movie is co-written and directed by Radu Muntean.Many movies show female full frontal nudity, so the fact that this occurs in this movie is no great surprise. What is surprising is that the film opens with two of the principals in bed. They have obviously just made love, and what we hear and see is their casual, languid talk right afterward. The woman has no reason to cover herself, so we see the nudity within the first minute or two of the film. Definitely different.The man, Paul, is played by Mimi Branescu. (Apparently Mimi can be a man's name in Romania.) He looks and acts like an Eastern European George Clooney, although he's not as handsome as Clooney. We learn that the woman, played by Maria Popistasu, is Raluca, who has been having an affair with Paul for months. She is certainly young and beautiful. (In fact, all of her is beautiful, as we learn in the first few minutes of the film.) What sets Raluca apart from most "other women" is that she's a dentist. (I can't remember ever seeing a movie where one of the women actors is a dentist.) In fact, it was through dentistry that she and Paul met, because Paul's daughter is her patient. Mirela Oprisor plays Adriana, Paul's wife. She too is very beautiful, although that aspect of her appearance is played down in the movie. She too is intelligent, and she loves Paul.That's the basic plot of the film. Paul has to decide. It's Christmas, and, in the context of the film, one of the women is going to get Paul for a Christmas present, and one is going to get left by Paul as her present.The film proceeds almost like a documentary. We meet Raluca's mother, Paul's parents, Adriana's sister, and some family friends. Paul and Adriana take their daughter to Raluca's clinic. Obviously, Paul and Raluca are exquisitely aware of the awkwardness of the situation, but, equally obviously, Adriana is not.All of these essentially normal activities take place with the clock ticking--in Paul's mind and in ours. Either way, this is going to end badly for someone. We just don't know who that someone will be, and what will happen after Paul decides. It's not a great movie if you want violent action or broad dramatic strokes. It is a great movie if you want to see a portrayal of normal people in an all-too-normal situation.I enjoyed this movie and recommend it. The only weakness is that it wasn't clear to me what qualities Paul had that would make both women want him as their partner. He's attractive enough, apparently virile enough, and fairly well off financially. However, Raluca knows he's cheating on his wife. What makes her think he won't cheat on her? Adrianna knows that he's away a lot, and, even when he's there, he's not particularly loving or caring. Still, there it is. Two women want him, and only one will have him.We saw this film at the excellent Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House in Rochester. It will work well on DVD, because all of the important scenes take place indoors. I think it's definitely worth finding and seeing.

I have previously seen only the first film of director Radu Muntean - 'Furia' (The Anger) made in 2002 - and I remember it as a very different kind of film. The style was dynamic and dramatic, and the theme was related to the period of transition of Romania after the fall of the Communism, with strong critical social accents against the decay of the morals and culture of these troubled times. Eight years and three films later 'Marti, dupa Craciun' (Tuesday After Christmas) is a very different kind of movie. The social commentary is not at all in focus here (although not completely absent), the localization is not important as the story could happen any place and any time, and the style is very different, aligned with what became known as the Romanian 'minimalist' New Wave style. What is common is the quality. The promise that Muntean was showing in that first movie turned now into the work of a mature director, fully mastering his tools, very sure on the story he wants to tell and the way he tells it.'Marti, dupa Craciun' tells a classical love story of a triangle that is caught in the critical moment of the relationship. To underline the dramatic lines of the conflict the segment in time that the script chooses are days before Christmas, the ultimate family holidays seasons. It is at that moment of the year that Paul Hanganu, a successful banking adviser in his mid 30s must chose between his lawyer wife Adriana and the younger dentist Raluca, with whom he has fallen irreversibly and incurably in love. No moral judgment is made about the situation or about the decision, love (in good Romanian literature tradition I may say) is looked at as an indisputable work of destiny, something one cannot fight, closer to disease or witchcraft than rational decisions. The whole story evolves around these three characters and their close family and friends circle which is busy with the holiday routine. A fragile balance oscillates not only in the soul and mind of the man who must chose between the stability and fidelity of his wife and the intensity of the feelings for his lover, but also between the lie of a relation that if revealed will be condemned by the social environment, and the truth of the sentiment in the new relationship. If eventually the truth is to prevail it will be at a high cost and nobody will be happy the day after Christmas. Fulfillment of love comes at a price, and there is no such thing as fair game in triangle relations.The 'minimalist' style is poignant in this film and works well, which may become in time one of the examples that explains in cinema schools how the method works. We have here all the principal characteristics of the style - the long and static shots where the focus is left to the actors, the low tone in which the story is told with realist and sincere dialogs, the avoidance of any sophisticated settings or complicated camera work. In order for the method to work good actors are needed, and director Muntean directs the work of a wonderful team, with Mimi Branescu (Paul), Mirela Oprisor (Adriana) and Maria Popistasu (Raluca) in the principal roles. Memorable scenes like the opening which sets the context of the sexual tension that drives the whole story, the scene in the dentist' s cabinet where the three characters dance around the innocence of the little girl of Paul and Adriana who is the potential victim of the story, part of them knowing the truth and part ignoring it, the scene of the revelation of the truth when the world of Adriana falls apart, and the final scene, where the Christmas carols symbolize the serenity and sacredness of the holidays, and of the stable family life which does not exist any longer, because the day after comes after any holiday.For many years the Romanian cinema had to pay a double dept - describing the Communist era with its lies and oppression, and dealing with the reality of the traumatic transition of Romania from dictatorship to democracy. Hesitating in style for more than a decade after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the accumulated energy burst to life after the first years of the century with the young directors of the new wave, in a style that had to deal with the economy of means of a cinema school that works at low budgets, and with a need and capacity of telling the truth and being true to the themes it dealt with and with its viewers. This is one of the big qualities of 'Marti, dupa Craciun' - it is true in its message and never sounds false or artificial. It is good to see that the young directors of the new wave who are not that young any longer continue to be true to themselves, while gaining in experience and maturity. It is also good to see that new themes and new environments show up in the Romanian films. 'Marti dupa Craciun' is a mid-class drama which describes a Romania that goes beyond the social traumas of the past. Such movies and such themes are good and necessary for a mature cinema school.