Two things seem to have fooled IMDb reviewers

Two things seem to have fooled IMDb reviewers. First is the artfully naturalistic style of the film, which looks and sounds as if cameraman and sound recordist were eavesdropping on real-life individuals. Second is the universal nature of these individuals' problems, for almost all the world can empathise with the parties when a dutiful wife and mother loses her husband of 10 years to a younger single woman.

Yet the documentary look and the banality of the plot, which nearly every reviewer has noted, hide a story people have failed to see. For this relatively simple tale is a satire of the liberated bourgeoisie 20 years after the revolution. To replace a tyrannical regime and its crude ideology, what have middle-class Romanians got? A society empty of values beyond the twin goals of first earning and spending money and then seeking sexual happiness.

Christmas has been drained of meaning to became an exchange of expensive and unwanted presents. Paul at least shows a nice dry sense of humour when he ridicules the absurd telescope going to his young nephew and the preposterous Barbie kit given to his daughter: “Oh, is it a black Barbie?” “No, she's just tanned!”. At lunch in December, Adriana presses rocket leaves on little Mara and, even though her husband is leaving, cannot think of missing her winter holiday 1000km away in Austria (when there are ski resorts a little over 100km from Bucharest).