Merman

Ana Lungu’s cinema has always been influenced by the personal – and in Merman we are closer to it than ever (indirectly, of course), witnessing her as a narrator-investigator of some unique private archives shot during wartime and communist Romania. Her main character is an extraordinary one: Alexandru Popovici, composer by day, (dis)informant for the secret police in the afternoon, and amateur filmmaker by night (and what nights!). Merman embroiders delicately  around the fragile themes of memory and identity, carefully mending their frayed edges, as show us the tender sequences where Lungu imagines a woman’s identity known only through images. Like all lace, it does not hide its gaps — after all, it is impossible to capture the full depth of such a tumultuous life) — but makes them an integral part of its delicate beauty. (Flavia Dima)