Film Review: Challenging ‘Child’s Pose’ Sparked by Luminita Gheoeghiu

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CHICAGO – Parents often feel responsible for their child’s reprehensible actions or despicable behavior. They may feel it reflects poorly on their own character and will go out of their way to fix a situation, make it all better. Certainly not all parents, but definitely the mother we meet in “Child’s Pose,” a Romanian film from last year that is finally getting released here in the States. It’s a fascinating film centered on a controlling and manipulative mother who will confound audiences with her own questionable behavior and blunt demeanor, leaving them to ponder whether or not her concern and emotional responses are genuine or come from a place of self-preservation.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

We meet the sixty something Cornelia (Luminita Gheoeghiu) at her birthday party, surrounded by her husband and a collection of Eastern European bourgeoisie. We learn this affluent woman is a successful theatrical set designer and architect and is respected in elite social circles. When asked where her thirty something son, Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache) is, she comes up with an excuse that sounds good, as if convincing herself more than others. As much as we see her buzzing around the room, dancing with abandon, laughing and greeting friends, we sense her adult son is a source of contention in her life. 

We meet her son when she does, sitting in a police station where his report is being processed. Cornelia’s sister, Olga (Natasa Raab), had pulled her out of a small theatrical performance to take her to her son, stating her son has been in a car accident. Earlier that evening, Barbu was involved in a reckless driving incident that resulting in the death of a fourteen year-old boy from a lower class village. They show up in their furs, talking on their cell phones and making demands of the two police officers. Cornelia persuades a distraught Barbu to lower the speed of his vehicle, determine to use her connections and spin this tragedy in such a way that will prevent her “baby” from going to jail, ruining his life forever. 

By using her upper class status to hinder the investigation and offering to pay off the driver (Vlad Ivanov) her son tried to overcome on the freeway, Cornelia takes over while her resentful son wishes she would stay out of it. But this is the pattern that has developed for so many years. She coddles and protects. His cowardice prevents him from speaking how he truly feels. As the accident continues to be processed, both legally and emotionally, the already fractured mother-and-son relationship becomes even more strained and distant. 

Continue reading for David J. Fowlie’s full review of ”Child’s Pose”

Domnui (Florin Zamfirescu) and Cornelia (Luminita Gheorghiu) in ‘Child’s Pose’
Photo credit: Zeitgeist Films

Continue reading for David J. Fowlie’s full review of ”Child’s Pose”