Asphalt Tango

Eleven Romanian women are put on a bus with the promise of work in Paris. In charge of the bus are a shady agent and a French woman. Andrei, learning that his wife is on board, goes after them; he believes the women are being pushed into prostitution, and he crosses the whole country to head the bus off. Nae Caranfil's film is about Romania in the nineties: the years when everything was coming apart, everyone was looking for a way out, and the West looked like deliverance. Comedy and pain are folded into each other here; both why the women are leaving and what may happen to them once they do are taken seriously. Charlotte Rampling and Mircea Diaconu lead. It is a Romanian and French co-production, and both languages are spoken in it.