Puiu's long, opening sequence suggests that his style in this work will be also be more radical and less classical than Rohmer's, filming entirely in long shot and a single take. After this beginning, however, the director startlingly introduces close-ups and crosscutting.

 

With its emphases upon enigmas, mystical coincidences, and its employment of structures of extended duration, Three Exercises in Interpretation recalls the work of Jacques Rivette as much as that of Eric Rohmer and, for much the same reasons, represents a new departure in Puiu's filmmaking.

 

Given the abundant bright light found in many of Puiu's settings here — in contrast to those of his remarkable debut feature The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, for example, which is set entirely at night — the digital format, with its narrow range of contrast, proves to be something of a liability, with many scenes having a regrettably washed-out look. (The film would also have benefited from a higher-definition digital format — the image-quality is cruder than need be.) The director and his cinematographer are also guilty of minor lapses from the formal rigor they so steadfastly uphold, as with some infelicitious zooms. On the whole, though, this is a gratifyingly challenging opus from one of the more interesting filmmakers working today.

 

Calin Peter Netzer's A Child's Pose follows the machinations of a possessive mother trying to protect her resentful son from the legal consequences of a car accident in which he killed a 14-year-old boy. The director's style is extremely close to that of the Danish Dogme school, involving a highly mobile handheld camera with many abrupt cuts, visually at odds with the relative austerity found in the films of Puiu, Mungiu, and Porumboiu — but, in its psychological, familial and sociological incisiveness, and in its lugubrious view of contemporary Romania, it seems to be nonetheless very much of a piece with the most notable works of this New Wave. 

 

A Child's Pose is anchored by the extraordinary performance by the veteran actress Luminița Gheorghiu — who appeared in The Death of Mr Lazarescu — as the mother. Here, too, the achievement is diminished by an inevitable reliance upon digital — here a digital intermediate — but Netzer is nevertheless a filmmaker to watch.