powermandan 'Graduation' has established itself as the hottest and most acclaimed foreign-language flick of the year. In a very unimpressive year for films, I was hoping this would bring it out of its slump. After all, there was room for enough potential to be the best film of the year in general. Not at all.'Graduation' deals with the overwhelming pressures of parenthood, ambition, and professionalism. The main character is physician Romeo (weird that as a doctor we just about never see him in practise) living in suburban Transylvania. When his daughter Eliza was born, he planned on her going far with academia and study abroad. She has the best grades in school and got scholarships to prestigious school in the UK. She just now needs to pass her final exams. On her way to her first exam, she is attacked and seriously injured. This jeopardizes her state of mind and Romeo's plans for her daughter.So this is the story. Romeo, his daughter, and wife are all good in this. Obviously Romeo shines. But there were some seriously hideous elements that angered me and cost this a good review from me. The first and biggest is Romeo (about 50) having an affair with a woman about 20. He's still married, his marriage is rocky, but never do we get the extent of it and why he's been cheating for over a year. Romeo and his mistress is disgusting. And their relationship is never delved into. There's even a scene at the end when Romeo is looking after the woman's kid brother. Each scene with the mistress stuck out like a sore thumb and had a bad aftertaste long after her scenes were finished. This got me to hating Romeo right off the bat. And this subplot wasn't even resolved!Romeo being a sleaze-bucket made himself as a whole dead on arrival. His other flaws got hugely amplified. After is daughter gets beaten and sexually assaulted, he still pressures her into doing the exams. We do get to see how hard it is for her to get accommodations, but he's a doctor! She's emotionally scarred and physically injured, so why not sign her up for exams some other time? He just gave up with trying to heal his daughter and went back to pressuring her for school. Scarring her even more with this pressure could increase her suicidal risk! Fathers that are bigger a-holes would draw the line somewhere. I know he wants her to have a better life, but maintaining the pressure of exams right after her the scariest moment in her life mad me hate Romeo even more. She's your daughter for Christ's sake! Romeo has some other doctor issues happening with him. Potential lawsuits for him are in place. Good! That's what you get for cheating with someone half your age and being borderline abusive to your daughter! These bits are barely resolved. Actually, almost nothing in this movie is resolved! The little bits of closure that we do get is very forgettable and unsuitable for a picture like this.Adrian Titieni does a mighty fine job acting. I didn't like his character at all, but he does give some pretty juicy chops. So good that "hate" and "could not stand" are a bit too harsh of terms to describe my reaction to him. Anybody less talented and I would truly have hated him and the movie would have sucked. Director Cristian Mungiu also does a good job in making a gloomy picture that can suck the audience right in. A few good aspects were not enough to save this. Thumbs down. 6/10

Will Jeffery A realistic Romanian drama about the struggles, compromises and implications of the parent's role in a family. This is a really intelligent, well made film that gives a bleak representation of contemporary life in Romania, particularly the youth who are told by their previous generation that they must hope and start fresh in a depressing state, though they are searching for their identities themselves. I liked that the film didn't stretch the emotional depth to a point that it seemed too unlikely or cliché but rather describe an honest family situation. It did in places fall flat but it's ambiguous ending alludes to the mysteries and uncertainty of life which serves the premise of the film nicely.

richard-90509 Total waste of my time. Kept waiting for something (anything!!) to happen. It just meanders along leaving plot holes, unexplained events, and unresolved issues in its wake. Starts nowhere, does nothing, ends nowhere.The high ratings of other reviewers must have been written by the artsy/fartsy intellectual types who swoon in rapturous joy as they ascribe significance to pretentiousness.

Andres-Camara 1642/5000 I see this movie, I have been very well. Little by little I begin to see that the whole film is cast with plane sequence, all the sequences have only one plane. I imagine he did it for pure marketing. The problem, for my taste is that in many moments the movie asks me to see things that I do not see. I do not care if you make a change of plan or do a good staging with actors and camera movements so that everything that has to come out on the screen comes out but the problem is that it does not and I see many moments with actors talking And I see only neck. Actors crying and I only see hair. Car actors talking and I only see the view from behind, that serves me.It could have been a great movie, the actors are all very well, or at least what they are seen. In making a sequential shot, the actors are asked for extra tension and perform it, but the director does not use it well. It's a movie that would be believable, but so many bad moments, it gets me too much of the film.The script is pretty good denouncing too many things, but the problem is that leaves many things half-way, without closing. The film begins with the breaking of a glass and I do not know who did it.The photograph is not good or bad, it is normal, it does not tell me anything, I know it is a Romanian film by the photograph.As I said I do not like the direction, but it is also that the film is too long and that has not been avoided either.Set today, everything about art, makeup and hairdressing is well taken care of.In short, it has the ballast of when it is not known how to use the technical resources well.