The Flower Bridge Review

I saw this documentary at a Romanian film festival curated by Mihai Chirilov at the Tribeca screening room. However, it premiered in the U.S. in February this year at MOMA’s documentary fortnight.

Reading the synopsis beforehand I knew the film was about a family in Moldova where the mother has gone to Italy to work and has not returned for three years, leaving the father to cope with the family on his own. It’s something I observed many times in the interviews I conducted in Romania for the documentary project I taped in 2007.

While I assumed this documentary was set in the region of Moldova in Romania, it was actually set in another country, the Republic of Moldova, which has a large Romanian-speaking population. Mihai introduced the film explaining that the title, The Flower Bridge, referred to the cultural affinity of these two countries. Or at least that’s what I understood.

He also mentioned that the director’s method with this production was to observe the family for several months while taking notes and then go back with a camera and have them re-enact specific scenes that he had synthesized to tell the story.  Wow! This leads to all kinds of questions – how much was directed and how much was real. The film starts with the father treating the boy for chicken pox, did that happen right as they were beginning to film or was it re-created? The boy doesn’t seem that sick actually, now that I think about it.

In any case the scene shows the tender side of the father caring for his son, and you learn about the poverty and isolation of the family that is unable to seek medical care. The father is the main character and you learn more about him from the scenes when there is no dialogue, the way he meticulously gathers the ash from the stove so that it doesn’t spill on the floor in the house, or the way he kneads and rolls out the dough and cuts it just so for his daughters to shape. There are a few scenes where he talks directly to camera in a very stilted fashion and explains something like why they are going to plant barley on a given day. In other scenes he barks out instructions for the children to undertake various chores, such as this one where they cut his hair. (I wouldn't have picked this one for the trailer, as I find the scene rather course and overt, when as a whole the film was a bit more subtle in tone.)

A more memorable scene followed a phone call from the mother. She spends a while on the line berating the children to be diligent with their schoolwork – we find out that most of what she has earned has gone to put them in better schools – and when it is his turn to speak he doesn’t have much to say, her situation remains the same, she can’t return until her ‘documents’ arrive and when that will happen seems uncertain. He hangs up and yells at the children for laughing at the situation. The children are laughing so as not to cry, at least they got to hear their mother’s voice and they can cover the embarrassed awkwardness of their father, who admittedly doesn’t know how to talk on the phone. The frustration he feels at the distance of his wife and the Kafkaesque bureaucratic obstacles they face to reunite is absolutely palpable as a lived family drama observed delicately from the other room at just the precise moment you need that distance.

The cinematography was absolutely beautiful. You observed the passing of the seasons as they worked the land and tended the house and animals. You could live in their mostly agricultural life without an explanation of why the geese and goats were gathered and driven here or there, or why the corn was being spread out in the loft, or the reasons for the rituals performed at the grave of the father’s parents. There was no music whatsoever and the audio was suberb.

The camera angles were very deliberate and isolated. Though you lived with the family in their little house, I couldn’t give you an exact layout from room to room. Except I’m sure it was small and there was always mostly one angle chosen probably for purposes of lighting and space. But even the exterior shots were sort of vague, at first I thought wider establishing shots were from the vantage of the house, but then it seemed that they overlooked the house and the village. My urge to build a complete and detailed picture of their life was over-ruled by the director’s intention to tell their story his way and allow me to experience what he considered the essence of their existence at that time.

The Flower Bridge (Podul de flori)

Directed by Thomas Ciulei
Romania, 2008, 87 minutes
Cast: Costică Arhir, Maria Arhir, Alexandra Arhir, Alexie Arhir
U.S premiere  —  February 2009 at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight.