RUNNERS-UP: Emmanuelle Béart (Strayed), Sandra Bullock (The Lake House), Penélope Cruz (Volver), Stephanie Leonidas (MirrorMask), Pauline Malefane (U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha), Lorraine Stanley (London to Brighton).
3 comments:
Anonymous
said...
After nearly two years of waiting for an Australian distributor (or even a film festival scout) to deliver Mr. Lazarescu to Melbourne, I managed to track down a pirate copy of it at a nasty street vendor in my native Tetovo, Macedonia (hours before leaving the country!). The DVD was encased in about four layers of dirt and some kind of sticky goo and I spotted it in the middle of hundreds of pirated editions of a selection of movies featuring Jackie Chan and/or various people on steroids. The subtitles were in Serbian, so my boyfriend couldn't watch it, but fortunately, I could, and that's all that matters.
After all that, I can't say I adored the movie like you and Nick appear to have - maybe it hit too close to home, since I've been forced to battle an Eastern European health system waay more times than any 21-year-old Australian citizen should - including just last month, when I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to witness an arrogant doctor (as well as, later, his parched, crudely plastered, bitter bitter nurse) abuse an ailing grandma in the exact same manner the Romanian specialists abused Mr. Lazarescu and his nurse ("Who's the specialist here/Why are you taking up my time/I insist on your utter humiliation before I consider whether I should delay your death/yadayadayada") - and this was an experience I didn't want to reexperience.
However, I did very much appreciate Luminita Georghiu's humble, generous, carefully and meticulously yet invisibly crafted performance. By the picture's final third, I swear she was thinking exactly what I was thinking. At the end I wished the camera went off with her rather than poring over Mr. Lazarescu and shoving my face into his ugly wretched death.
3 comments:
After nearly two years of waiting for an Australian distributor (or even a film festival scout) to deliver Mr. Lazarescu to Melbourne, I managed to track down a pirate copy of it at a nasty street vendor in my native Tetovo, Macedonia (hours before leaving the country!). The DVD was encased in about four layers of dirt and some kind of sticky goo and I spotted it in the middle of hundreds of pirated editions of a selection of movies featuring Jackie Chan and/or various people on steroids. The subtitles were in Serbian, so my boyfriend couldn't watch it, but fortunately, I could, and that's all that matters.
After all that, I can't say I adored the movie like you and Nick appear to have - maybe it hit too close to home, since I've been forced to battle an Eastern European health system waay more times than any 21-year-old Australian citizen should - including just last month, when I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to witness an arrogant doctor (as well as, later, his parched, crudely plastered, bitter bitter nurse) abuse an ailing grandma in the exact same manner the Romanian specialists abused Mr. Lazarescu and his nurse ("Who's the specialist here/Why are you taking up my time/I insist on your utter humiliation before I consider whether I should delay your death/yadayadayada") - and this was an experience I didn't want to reexperience.
However, I did very much appreciate Luminita Georghiu's humble, generous, carefully and meticulously yet invisibly crafted performance. By the picture's final third, I swear she was thinking exactly what I was thinking. At the end I wished the camera went off with her rather than poring over Mr. Lazarescu and shoving my face into his ugly wretched death.
Great selection, and alot I have not seen. Will be adding 'em to lovefilm right now. Thanks!
As one film-loving blogger to another, I've tagged you for the current "8 Things" meme over at my blog here. Please "play" or "pass" as you see fit.
And Happy 4th of July!
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