MIMI BRANESCU AND MARIA POPISTASU IN TUESDAY, AFTER CHRISTMAS

A man with two women, and a daughter who needs braces

Romanian director Radu Muntean's 99-minute Tuesday, After Christmas (Marti, dupa craciun) is a scrupulously mondane study of an adulterer with a wife and 10-year-old daughter whose orthodontist girlfriend happens to be responsible for correcting the little girl's slight under-bite. When dad takes daughter for a consultation about braces, mom unexpectedly shows up. This unnecessary encounter at her workplace upsets the girlfriend, which leads the husband to confess his infidelity later to his wife. She wants an immediate divorce and her husband moves to his love nest. And yet, it's Christmas, and when the time comes, the couple still has to show up for the in-laws and play Santa to their daughter. The moral is that marital ruptures don't mean you're excused from decorating the tree and wrapping the presents.

Like other Romanians whose stock is high in the international festival market these days, Muntean specializes in precise, scrupulously unhurried observation of ordinary life. Sometimes there's an important issue brought up. Sometimes there's a darkly ironic message. This time there's mainly just a voyeuristic feeling. We're actually spying on Paul Hanganu (Mimi Branescu), a schlub with some sort of loan office job, as he alternates between his blond girlfriend Raluca (Maria Popistasu), who makes him feel like a stud, and his dark-haired, bespectacled wife Adriana (Mirela Oprisor), with whom he's just a spouse. Muntean's nearly 10-minute opening scene depicts Paul and Raluca nude together on a bed kissing and chatting. They are exceptionally natural and relaxed, but the scene runs too long. It's a miscalculation. It's not what the film is about and just seems included because somebody liked it.

The next scene shows Paul with Adriana sifting through hideous blouses and snow boards at a shop. All these two sequences reveal is what you'd expect. Paul's affair is fresh and sexy for him. His life as a husband is routine. The little girl, Mara (Sasa Paul-Szel), is chirpy, chatty, borderline annoying. All the scenes show off Haganu's stiflingly bourgeois existence. His parents shower Mara with junk. There is much talk of gifts and what they cost; of winter resorts. What is child orthodontistry but a middle-class luxury denied to the working class? The scene in the orthodontistry office might have been rich in irony, but instead is a tedious exercise in pediatric dental terminology.

Finally Tuesday, After Christmas has two good scenes, or two moments when Muntean gets to his point. When Paul subsequently spills the beans -- tells Adriana he's "very much in love" with someone he's met, and she responds with anger and tears -- the Romanian penchant for lovingly examined banality finally pays off, because the emotions are intense enough to make the dialogue thought-provoking. Paul's confession seems extremely unwise as well as ill-timed, but Adriana's response is, as he says, nastier and uglier than what he's been doing. Is Paul's relationship with Raluca worth trashing his marriage? If marital infidelity is wrong, aren't some responses to it from spouses also questionable?

There's also a beautiful irony (though it might have been much subtler and wittier) in the final scene with little Mara's paternal grandparents, when Mara is pushed forward to watch passing carolers so Paul can rush "Santa's" presents into the other room, while Adriana smoothly slips him a present out of her purse to put back there too. This complicity, despite Adriana's earlier clenched-teeth warning that she's not staying for long, is a clear sign that the marriage-and-parent game trumps the adultery drama. And that is a message worth the wait. As with other Romanian films, I am annoyed, I feel the scenes have been dragged out too long (and may even be poorly arranged, as here), and yet there is always something. The acting of the principals is very good here. The camerawork by Tudor Lucaciu has been justifiably commended (especially in the nude scenes). And yet I'm not the only person who is asking if this was worth making a movie about; if Paul, in particular, warranted so much of our attention.

Tuesday, After Christmas was in the Un Certain Regard segment at Cannes, and included in other festivals. Seen and reviewed as part of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.