Boogie Review

Nothing much happens but it's all going on in this low-key Romanian drama about three guys in their thirties attempting to rekindle the fire that stoked their adolescence. Director and co-writer Radu Muntean, who like Boogie's principle characters grew up under Romania's communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu, uses a boozy night out with the boys to track the ordinary fears and frustrations of 36-year old Bogdan 'Boogie' Coicazanu (Dragos Bucur), for whom domestic security is beginning to feel a bit too restrictive.

Boogie is on holiday at Romania's Neptune Beach with his wife Smaranda (Anamaria Marinca) and their four-year-old son Adi (Vlad Muntean). There he runs into two old mates, Penscu (Mimi Branescu) and Iordache (Adrian Vancica). All five of them arrange to go out for a drink that evening but it's clear to Smaranda, who doesn't think much of her husband's pals, that the night isn't going to be a family affair so she leaves them to it and returns to the hotel with their son.

Off the leash and on the lash, Boogie and the boys embark on a night of dogged, sloppy, slightly hopeless drinking that involves a trip to a bowling alley, an encounter with a prostitute and, as the hangover looms, a collective admission that in their own different ways, each has failed to capitalise on the hope and promise that accompanied the glory days of their horny, booze-fuelled youth.

Boogie takes some pride in the fact that, unlike his mates, he's still a hit with the girls, but the revelation that prostitute Ramona (Roxana Iancu) was four years old when the guys left high school is a gentle reminder that neither booze nor girls nor marriage nor work can prevent the clock from ticking away. Iordache, it turns out, is not the big shot in Sweden he claims to be and Penescu is trapped working in the tourist industry where he sells cheap escape routes to other Romanians. It's only Boogie who appears to have achieved anything on his own terms, and even that hasn't engendered any sense of confidence about his place in the world.