Words fail and lose all meaning in front of such an immense loss – that of Luminița Gheorghiu (1949-2021), undoubtedly the greatest Romanian film actress of the last 35 years, or if not, of all time.

Luminiția Gheorghiu’s countenance was one of the New Romanian Cinema’s emblems, almost synonymous with the current that launched Romanian cinema onto an orbit that has previously seemed unimaginable. Her artistic contributions were the thin red line that connected the movement from its very beginning (Cristi Puiu’s Stuff and Dough, or even back to Michael Haneke’s Code Inconnu, a foreign film that foreshadowed what was to come) all the way to one of the current’s last great films, which announced the ending of the Wave’s first phase: Radu Jude’s Aferim!. A final role which she played alongside Victor Rebengiuc, constructed as a reference to the very one that launched her career – the one in Stere Gulea’s The Moromete Family (1987), a film which would act as a major influence for the filmmakers of the New Cinema; however, she also appeared in a few other films that ended up having a long-lasting impact on the Romanian cinema of the aughts, in small, yet remarkable roles: Sequences (1982, dir. Alexandru Tatos) and Too Late (1996, dir. Lucian Pintilie).

No other single actor – save for Răzvan Vasilescu, possibly – seems to have left a bigger mark on modern Romanian cinema than she did; for sure, no other actress. Unfortunately, we know all too well that the last two decades in our local cinema have not been too generous towards women (let us not forget the years in which the Gopo Awards couldn’t even put together a list of nominees for Best Leading Actress!), and the roles offered to them were oftentimes minimal monochord. Even so, Luminița Gheorghiu’s sheer virtuosity turned her presence into a quintessential element of her films, no matter how small her parts were, no matter the length of her screen time (like, for example, in Cristian Mungiu’s 2012 Beyond the Hills, or Corneliu Porumboiu’s 2006 12:08 East of Bucharest). It’s because she was also an actress who excelled in silences, in pure physicality, in interiors – her dialogue-free appearance in Sequences’ second tableau, clocking in at just a few seconds, is more than enough to illustrate an entire emotional universe: that of a woman utterly wearied and humiliated, whose agency over her own life had been completely uprooted. (“Tonight, I’ll make her sleep on the rug again”, Mircea Diaconu’s character threatens.)

Luminița Gheorghiu was both the prototype as well as archetype (which few other filmmakers and actresses managed to reach) of the Romanian film female character: from working-class women to the nouveau riche, living on both historical sides of the Romanian Revolution, the vast majority of which had another element in common – the fact of living an anguished existence both in their private lives, as well as in their larger socio-historical contexts. There is, however, a unique element in her acting, one that places her work light-years ahead of her peers: a quelque chose that almost eludes verbal description, but which could be described as a sort of dignity, a sort of inner power which she injected into each of her characters, thus avoiding their characterization as simple victims. Put together, these portraits sum up an entire encyclopedia of the suffering to which Romanian women are subjected, yet the characters whom she gave life to were never defeatist or even defeated, nor are they gripped by pessimism or cynicism – the kind we see in the vast majority of the films which comprise the New Cinema, a movement (let us not forget) comprised almost exclusively of male directors and screenwriters. (Save for a couple of short films, Gheorghiu worked on a single feature film directed by a woman, appearing in a small role: The Champion, directed by Elisabeta Bostan, released in 1990.)

Within these characters’ orbits lie male characters that are, at best, inept or useless (such as the father in Stuff and Dough, a passive observer to his wife’s efforts of simultaneously maintaining the family store, run from their balcony, their home, and, on top of it all, a non-verbal disabled grandmother), or, at worst, blatantly abusive. I’m risking an iconoclastic interpretation, but I can’t help but say that I was shocked by the sheer degree of domestic exploitation and pure violence to which Catrina’s character is subjected to in the film – one that is verbal, emotional, and finally physical – by Ilie Moromete (and I wonder then, what does it mean that this latter character has been sanctified in our local collective mentality?). An iteration of Catrina whose sole comfort in her tortured existence is her youngest, Niculae (since not even her sleep, haunted by premonitory dreams, is capable of offering her peace), as she lets her trained harshness aside in front of the child; a solace that she knows she must sacrifice towards the boy’s best interests, sending him away to school – the abandonment with which Gheorghiu cries in the film’s penultimate scene is ever more harrowing than the way she does when her character is beaten. The abuses endured by her characters come under various shapes, amongst them the fact that they are constantly derided or disregarded, and is enacted not just by their partners – it also comes from her sons (Child’s Pose, dir. Călin Peter Netzer), her colleagues at work (The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu, 2005, dir. Cristi Puiu), by police agents and even society at large (Code Inconnu, 2000, dir. Michael Haneke). But what is arguably the most important common element in these characters is that they are, in one way or another, a materfamilias – woman of the “double workday”, who toils away in both the public and domestic sphere (towards the ends of others), where she also often takes care of adult-age children (as in the case of Puiu’s films, where she had initially been slated to also play the role of Pușa in Niki and Flo, in The Moromete Family or the aforementioned Child’s Pose and 4, 3, 2.). Except for (the rather weak) I’m an Old Communist Hag (2013, dir. Stere Gulea), an adaptation that is abundant in internal monologues inserted through voice-overs, rarely do we have any access to her characters’ inner thoughts and emotions, which is a testament to her sheer force as a film actress.

Still, as I mentioned earlier, Gheorghiu elevated her characters above the status of simple victims, even in situations in which, at times, they would break under the burden of their difficulties (such as the monologue she has in Code, when illegal immigrant Maria realized that she is once again doomed to beg on the streets of Paris, away from her rural Transylvania, where her family is trying to build a home – in what is arguably her most tragic character). What surprises is not only their inner strength and their capacity to move forward, it’s also their affection, their warmth – just look at all the scenes in which she would open the doors to her home and welcome people inside (4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days, Aurora, I’m an Old Communist Hag, Stuff and Dough), radiating that ineffable kind of familiarity onto which so much of the New Cinema’s realism relied on, the absence of which would have caused their constructions to collapse into unlikelihood. No matter their social status, Luminița Gheorghiu’s female characters have something of the everywoman ingrained in them – in an in-depth interview conducted by Gabriela Filippi and Andrei Rus for FILM MENU (which is a must-read), she claims that Ion Cojar, her acting teacher at IATC, gave her an average grade at the end of her junior year due to her “incompatible physique”. By this, I assume, she’s speaking about the fact that she didn’t fit into traditional beauty standards; but it’s exactly her looks, together with her incredible talent, that made her roles seem so tangible that they seemed to be plucked from daily life itself.

Not that she was an actress who was exclusively dedicated to narrative fiction – a rare exception in her filmography is her 2013 role opposite Monica Bârlădeanu in The Matriarch, an experimental fashion film directed by Barna Nemethi, the (by-then) editor-in-chief of ALL HOLLOW, on the occasion of the magazine’s first issue. Wearing make-up that could almost be labeled under “drag”, dressed in haute couture, and with her fingers stuffed with rings, at one point she seems to cough up a bluebird, and, in another scene, she chastises what seems to be a younger version of herself by spitting a stream of glitter towards her. Undoubtedly, her career’s strangest role – which does show that she was open to a radically different approach, but that never came to fruition; after her role in Aferim!, closing a symbolic loop alongside Victor Rebengiuc, the actress retired both from her activity and public life. She had always been a discreet presence in the latter – avoiding statements and appearances that were suitable to the modern press cycle, keeping herself away from the pitfalls of mass media or politics, which other peers from her generation of her were incapable of avoiding (like Mircea Diaconu, for example).

Through her role and her enormous talent, Luminița Gheorghiu managed to use her work to illuminate the destinies of so many women who live their lives far away from the big screens, hidden between the four walls of their homes, lacking a voice, lacking representation (be it artistical or political). Luminița Gheorghiu not only lent them a voice, a face, and a body; she equally endowed them with nobility, strength, and complexity. She leaves behind the very peak of what Romanian cinema has offered to this day – and the most singular performance by an actress in its entire history.

Flavia Dima

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.