Tudor Giurgiu returns to the big screen with a new feature told from a female perspective, twenty years after Love Sick (2006). Giurgiu once again chooses to focus on an intrinsically female experience though one far less controversial today than Love Sick was at the time. Co-written by the director alongside Conrad Mericoffer and Radu Grigore, the script follows an ostensibly idyllic couple, Bianca (Andreea Vasile) and Victor (Emilian Oprea), whose relationship collapses on the eve of their wedding. The reason? The bride-to-be discovers her fiancé has cheated on her with his secretary.

At first glance, the film seems to rely on fairly innocuous clichés. In fact, it carries a distinctly misogynistic message. The secretary’s proof of the affair is a positive pregnancy test, which she brandishes like a weapon in front of Bianca. The forty-something bride appears more devastated by her inability to conceive – despite undergoing fertility treatments – than by the betrayal itself. Within the film’s logic, she measures herself as inferior to the pregnant secretary, her infertility framed as an obstacle to her fulfilment as a “complete” woman. Bianca’s escape during the wedding initially suggests a possible liberation from this internalised mindset. Yet the nocturnal getaway, during which she encounters a series of colourful local figures in the seaside town of Eforie Sud, turns out to be little more than a masquerade riddled with shouting matches, quarrels, and entrenched misogynistic attitudes.

What might, in theory, elevate the film above run-of-the-mill production values rests on a technical device that is, in itself, just as clichéd as the script. A 65-minute single take follows Bianca from behind – accompanied by her carnival-like entourage – carefully documenting what is meant to be a transformative journey. Cinema history offers a long list of one-shot films – and an even longer list of films that merely simulate the effect – where the technique serves a clear dramatic purpose. In Giurgiu’s case, the expectation is that this sustained gaze will capture the inner depth of a character at a pivotal, potentially complex moment. Instead, the device is overwhelmed by incessant conflict that delivers little beyond spectacle. Shouting and profanity, filmed up close with an almost obsessive attention to reaction shots, recall Romanian television shows from the early 2000s far more than the dark humour of the Romanian New Wave invoked by the film’s curatorial framing.

At some point  Bianca stumbles upon a nocturnal pagan ritual. Gathered in a circle by the sea, women dressed in white wearing flower crowns chant an incantation to a fertility goddess. Beyond its sheer awkwardness, the scene reinforces the same logic that reverberates throughout the film: a woman’s ultimate fulfilment coincides with motherhood. Ostensibly united in solidarity, these figures amount to feminist caricatures: women who claim not to need men, yet feel compelled to become pregnant. Their ritual is swiftly interrupted by male authority, embodied by the local police, who dismiss them as “crazy” and treat them like children: “Come on, pack up your toys.” Immediately after escaping the sea witches, Bianca meets a friend who likewise labels her “possessed” and “crazy” for believing that her future husband – despite a history of infidelity – could betray her.

After a night of aimless wandering – marked by cheap vodka, kitschy rides, and pop music looping in the background – a sunrise finally breaks through this atmosphere suspended somewhere in the early 2000s. With daylight comes a supposed restoration of Bianca’s inner balance, one that conveniently aligns with the reinstatement of patriarchal order. Worn down by her fight, she arrives at a curiously swift accommodation with the harm Victor has caused.  Gazing dramatically at the sea, nausea rising in her throat, she reaches a belated realisation: in reproductive terms, she may have now fulfilled what the film frames as her role as a woman.

Made with the support of Arome Film Creative Camp, 3 Days in September fails even as a promotional showcase for the four-star Arome 22 hotel, where the wedding was meant to take place. Instead, it resembles a project cobbled together by children at a filmmaking summer camp. It remains a mystery why a film so lacking, from virtually every angle, was selected by a major international festival consistently positions itself as a champion of progressive values.

3 Days in September had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, in the Limelight section.

Alex Petrescu

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În prezent, studiază Arhive audiovizuale: Prezervare și Curatoriere din cadrul UNATC. A scris pentru TalkingShorts și EyeForFilm.

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Alex Petrescu

+ posts

În prezent, studiază Arhive audiovizuale: Prezervare și Curatoriere din cadrul UNATC. A scris pentru TalkingShorts și EyeForFilm.

This author does not have any more posts.