The Death of Mr Lazarescu
Starring: Ion Fiscuteanu, Luminita Gheorghiu, Doru Ana, Monica Barladeanu
Director: Cristi Puiu
The film: The video release of The Death of Mr Lazarescu couldn't be more timely. With Romania's impending accession to the European Union on January 1, Cristi Puiu's treatise of how the country's health-care system fails its citizens reveals much about the pitfalls of Romanian society 17 years after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu's regime. It would, however, be remise to see Puiu's film as dealing merely with a Romanian problem: these trials are universal, and this is a tale that could easily have been in Baltimore as in Bucharest.
With the film unravelling largely in fluorescent-lit hospital corridors and operation theatres, it's easy to dub The Death of Mr Lazarescu as Romania's answer to ER. But there's hardly any urgency in the emergency rooms and those initials could well stand for 'Evading Responsibilities' instead.
Shot in jarring cinema verite style, viewers are told the heart-wrenching tale of Dante Remus Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu, below). His initial breakdown at home seemed far from fatal; a heavy drinker who disregards his cancer-stricken condition, he's conscious enough when the ambulance - and the nurse in it, Mioara (Luminita Gheorghiu), who prove to be Lazarescu's only ally through the night - finally arrives (after a painfully long wait) and transports him to his first hospital.