Cristian Nemescu’s California Dreamin’ opens today at the IFC Center in Manhattan. I’ve been taken with the film since a first viewing at last year’s Sarasota Film Festival and a recent re-view confirmed my initial elated impressions. (See clip below for an unsubtitled taste—that is indeed Armand Assante, as the stoic, always-simmering American Army captain Doug Jones.)
Hailing from Romania, Nemescu died, aged 27, while editing California Dreamin’, so the title bears the parenthetical (Nesfarsit) or (Endless)—meant more in the sense of “unfinished” than “overlong.” But as I wrote last year, “…what surprises and delights is how complete the work feels, finished in every way aesthetically and thematically, any longueurs or asides entirely part of Nemescu’s indelible emotional tapestry.”
Get thee hence, in other words. This one’s unmissable. And then come back to this post and see after the break for three of Nemescu’s short films (all with English subtitles), which paved the way to his, tragically, only feature.
Mihai si Cristina (Mihai and Cristina) (2001), Part 1:
Part 2:
Poveste la scara ‘C’ (C Block Story) (2003):
Marilena de la P7 (2006):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz4v7J7Sbwo
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