One Floor Below – first look review

One floor below the apart­ment of fam­i­ly man and dog lover, San­du Patrascu (Teodor Cor­ban), a young woman is killed. From this dra­mat­i­cal­ly catalysing event, you might rea­son­ably believe that what fol­lows is a tense civil­ian detec­tive sto­ry, or even a hor­ror thriller. What no one expects and what Roman­ian direc­tor Radu Muntean does bril­liant­ly is depict an instant return to the most banal of realities.

The humour and per­spec­tive of this sto­ry are so sub­tly wrought that one could almost declare them non-exis­tent were it not for the clear glee Muntean has tak­en in giv­ing Patrascu the most bor­ing life imag­in­able. By minute­ly exag­ger­at­ing the social real­ism, he makes the point that what peo­ple want to pro­tect is not nec­es­sar­i­ly dra­mat­ic or glam­ourous. The hand that we’re dealt is all that we have.

Patrascu runs a busi­ness with his wife con­duct­ing elab­o­rate and social­ly use­less car deals that require him to dri­ve all over town, own two mobile phones and have con­stant tedious exchanges which he seems to gen­uine­ly enjoy. Life is some­thing that he appre­ci­ates . He’s on a diet but mother’s cook­ing is too deli­cious for him not to cheat when temp­ta­tion calls.

He’s intro­duced in the open­ing scene hav­ing a love­ly time out­doors with his charm­ing gold­en retriev­er, Jer­ry. We see Jer­ry run­ning and jump­ing and swim­ming in the water. After the excur­sions are over, Patrascu uses his cupped hands to cre­ate a bowl at a water foun­tain, offer­ing the bowl to Jer­ry, repeat­ed­ly until sati­a­tion. All is whole­some. All is well.

Muntean evokes Micheal Haneke by mak­ing oppos­ing tonal deci­sions. Patrascu not only over­hears but sees incrim­i­nat­ing things pri­or to find­ing out that his neigh­bour, Lau­ra, has had her head bashed in. This is the point at which Haneke would start height­en­ing the anx­i­ety of the mood. Muntean plonks his lead back into the same old fam­i­ly dynam­ic. His pre-ado­les­cent son is a loud, con­fi­dent child.

Rather than being inti­mat­ed by the death in the build­ing, he is fas­ci­nat­ed and Face­book stalks the vic­tim, frankly announc­ing his dis­cov­er­ies to his par­ents. Patrascu’s wife, Olga, is a func­tion­al woman whose face we rarely see. Indeed nei­ther wife nor son are not shown head on or in close-up. Bonds are domes­tic and rou­tine and not fuelled by inti­ma­cy. There’s noth­ing as stark as dis­con­nec­tion among the Patrascus and noth­ing as hot as hon­esty. Things just tick along.

There are mul­ti­ple inter­pre­ta­tions avail­able when anoth­er neigh­bour starts insin­u­at­ing his way into the bosom of this fam­i­ly. Iulian Postel­nicu with his sal­low face and creepy stare is per­fect­ly cast as Valentin Dima. Patrascu’s wife feeds him, Patrascu’s son befriends him. Patrascu him­self is enlist­ed in per­form­ing the most hilar­i­ous­ly point­less of car ser­vices. Valentin’s moti­va­tions for being there are sub­merged and although Patrascu mis­trusts him, he enter­tain his presence.

Dra­mat­ic irony between the two men cre­ates a qui­et­ly sim­mer­ing source of intrigue that – again – con­trasts with nerve-jan­gling Haneke-esque nas­ti­ness. Amid the almost calm and the for­ward momen­tum of life, it’s easy to for­get that a woman died in sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances. Repres­sion of uncom­fort­able facts is a cop­ing mech­a­nism peo­ple use every­day out there in the world. Inside the movies, deaths usu­al­ly mean some­thing. By not play­ing into this trope of fic­tion, Muntean leaves us with uncom­fort­able ques­tions to ponder.