Cannes Review: Radu Muntean's Minimalist 'One Floor Below'

The Romanian New Wave ain't so new anymore, being roughly as old as the current century. Its key directors, like Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu and Corneliu Porumboiu have become established figures on the festival and arthouse circuit and between them have largely cleaved to the movement's distinctive principles and aesthetic: an unadorned, unromantic, realist sensibility applied to stories of social relevance and critique. Radu Muntean is one of that vanguard, with his last film "Tuesday After Christmas," which describes in minute domestic detail the quandary of a family man engaged in an affair, achieving probably his highest level of international acclaim and nabbing a slot in the 2010 Un Certain Regard selection. 'Tuesday' was a very fine film, playing to the strengths of the New Wave approach by delivering a simple, but immediate version of a familiar love triangle story as lived in banal detail by ordinary people. His follow up, "One Floor Below"...