The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, December 2-8
Intimate Bed (1993)
Directed by Mircea Daneliuc
Democracy, following the violent Romanian Revolution of 1989, is anything but free, as illustrated in Daneliuc’s urgent and darkest of comedies. Vasile runs a failing cinema where he finds perhaps his only pleasure, that is, paying his beautiful cashier for intercourse. Meanwhile, his wife is pregnant and wants to sell the baby; he wants it aborted. After Vasile finds a large sum of money in his office drawer, things seem to be looking up, but they only get more insane. This is a world of desperation and hysteria, where all seems conspiratorial, nobody is to be trusted, and any hope to move forward is either void or squashed. Early in the film, wherein lunacy has already ensued, Vasile breaks the fourth wall, looking directly at the audience and stating, “I see bad times.” He’s not kidding. Samuel T. Adams (December 2, 7pm at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, as the opening night of “Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema”; Q&A with featured filmmaker Daneliuc follows)
