Cannes Film Festival 2016 – The Romanian film Baccalaureate Director Cristian Mungiu, in an official competition during the 69th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, won the price of the staging.
Romeo, a doctor in a small town in Transylvania, did everything to make her daughter, Eliza, be accepted in an English university. There is no longer the girl, a very good student, only a formality that should not be a problem: obtaining her baccalaureate. But Eliza gets attacked and the precious sesame seems brutally out of reach. With him, it is all the life of Romeo which is questioned when he then forgets all the principles he instilled in his daughter, between compromises and compromises …
“”My film is not Romanian, it is universal. It is a film on human nature and on problems that people can encounter at a given moment in their lives, whatever their countrySays Cristian Mungiu.
Following the assault suffered by Eliza, Romeo who is ready for anything for her daughter will have to make choices. Which will push him to look in front of himself and ask questions about himself, his loved ones and the whole society in which he lives. Where does his moral sense start and ends that of his loved ones? Is it ready for all compromises to offer a better life to his daughter? What about him? More generally, what about the dreams that we make when we are young, when we believe that we can change things, when one thinks that we can do better than the others? What about this era of life where we believe that beautiful principles and good will can face general corruption, a whole system? Should we accept compromises and corruption? Are there attenuating circumstances to this? Are there situations where we have no choice? Once in this gear of corruption, is there a way to backtrack? Is the fact that this corruption is generalized an excuse to use it?
Finally, what is preferable: remain “clean”, refuse any compromise and live with difficulty or accept to rebuild in the system, “render services” and receive it, but put your conscience in mute?
Romeo believed in a new Romania when he returned to live there with his wife, after the revolution in 1991. A whole generation of Romanians, born during the period of communism, had fought so that things change. But in vain. These Romanians had only been able to survive by making compromises. It is clear that for their generation, there is no more hope, the company is gangrenous: corruption, small arrangements, compromises …
How many generations should we sacrifice to save the country?
The father thought he could hold his daughter far from corruption and send her far away.
However, overnight, following this assault by which Elisa was the victim, everything is questioned. Romeo is lost. He will ask that he is a service and will find himself taken in a gear. One service by calling for another. He will discover throughout the film that from compromise in compromise, he himself let himself be trapped, unlike his wife who refuses to do so completely.
How could Romeo explain to Elisa that he let himself “contaminate”? How can we explain to his children that we ended up agreeing to make concessions? We try to instill principles for them, but how can we tell them one day that we can derogate from these principles?
In addition, Romeo has chosen for Elisa, or should we impose his choices on her children or should we let them decide for themselves? Should we involve your children in your own choices?
It is a very important question to know which values to instill in your children, how to raise them? Advise them? Ask them to stay or leave? Can we make such decisions in their place?
“I made this film,” said Cristian Mungiu, because I am myself a father and ask myself all these questions. I read the press a lot, there are a lot of corruption stories. Now I think there is a relationship between corruption, compromise and children. In reality this film deals with the relationship between parents, children and truth. We often make a truth for children, a suitable truth, but it is not good, you have to have the courage to look in a mirror and to say: I made bad choices in my life with which I have to live, but I must talk to it with my children. When you educate children, the important thing is not so much what they are told, but what they do, what they see. The reality they see. Will they one day be able to stop corruption? So you have to explain, think, show them so that tomorrow they know what to do.
I hope that the Romanians who will watch this film will ask themselves questions of ethics and think.
My film is not a social criticism, I speak there of humans: at a time of life, we realize that we have made in our life choices which are not good and that we can catch up with children. In Romania, we have done a lot, progress, but there is still a lot to do, we will not see these problems resolved because it will still take a long time. Will our children see that? ”.
Baccalaureate is a very beautiful film, which poses a lot of questions and pushes to think. And although history is happening in Romania, we could transpose it into several countries, including in Tunisia which is today gangrenous by corruption and in which “services rendered” have become commonplace!
Neïla Driss
