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| Source: cinemagia.ro |
A Romanian movie trying to adopt the Hollywood style and even succeeds, Hello! How are you? (2010) also has an interesting message to think about.
The story follows a couple married for almost 20 years and their teenage child in Bucharest. The relationship between the two humble married people is growing apart; the distance is carefully covered more or less by their common sense and kindness, but the joy of being together is gone. They rediscover that joie de vivre on the Internet, using the chat application. Accidentally or not, as a test or rather as a coincidence, they end up virtually falling in love. With each other.
This love develops the theme of committing adultery, not knowing that they have been living together for such a long time, they start feeling guilty. Weird enough, unveiling their true identities results in a divorce and the ending shows us that the two can only be together in virtual space (that is some sort of hope that not everything is lost).
The movie underlines a very common problem in these postmodern times. How long does love last? How long should it last? How can one be happy with just one person their whole lives? How not to crave for someone else? Someone more mysterious, more enjoyable? How should one face the temptation of the unknown? But how not to change the things why the other fell in love with you? Of course, the movie doesn't provide an answer, we ourselves must face the question: How to cope with our human weakness?
The film addresses itself to two types of audiences, to the young and to the mature. The story is narrated by the boy, the crazy kindhearted teenager, trying to understand life, but the fundamental message of the movie is addressed to those who enjoy dealing with such problems, those who like dwelling on love and engagement.
What makes this movie enjoyable are the cute dialogues, the innocent behavior of the grown-ups when being afraid of being caught chatting, as well as the visual elements showing up on the screen as instant message lines. The chat and the love feeling invade the characters' minds in such way that even the food labels become instant messages (please note that the camera and graphics were developed by an ad man, so the visual is quite catchy).
Moreover, interesting is also the twist-like behavior of the two generations. While the grown-ups rediscover themselves on the Internet, the teenager manages to fall in love (and to become the good boy) and be in a relationship by using only reality.
Hello! How are you? grabs attention with its Hollywood-warning onto the fact that we keep estranging us from our Selves, that we are empty and we're constantly on the run after something new and fresh, but that we also get easily bored. All of this in a more lighted form, not as dramatic as I presented it. After all, it's a romantic comedy. A cute Romanian one.
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Probably most of my readers are wondering why am I emphasizing on the fact the the movie is a Romanian one. Not out of patriotism, but out of the wondering that such a movie is a Romanian one. Because Romanian movies are very minimalistic, slow burners, very few dialogue occurs. But right now Romania is on the wave!
