Sundays on Leave

Romania, in the last years of the Ceausescu period. Things have gone wrong between Cristina and her boyfriend. He wants to sleep with her before he leaves for his compulsory army service; she asks to be married first. At the same time she gets involved with a somewhat rebellious actor who fancies himself with women. The man has vague plans to leave the country, and the mysterious phone calls he gets may have to do with that. The film gives this not as suspense but as the uncertainty of a period. How private life closes in on itself in a country where everyone is hiding something is the subject. Nathalie Bonnifay and George Alexandru appear in Nae Caranfil’s hundred and four minute film, a joint French and Romanian production, completed in 1993.