Afraid of the Dark (Bruises)

I decided to step out of my comfort zone and watch this Italian debut feature from Massimo Coppola about a young Romanian woman who elects to travel to Italy to try and find her mother. Told through the eyes of a Romanian immigrant I thought this would be a worthwhile and new approach to the subject matter; instead I was presented with a grim and dialogue light version of pure pretension.


I understand that sometimes the reality of life is mundane and most people are just trying to make an honest living however hard that may be and that the director was trying to portray this by creating a sad and lonely narrative. But there was nothing here that was informative or thought provoking, which should surely be the point of this film, to start a discussion on immigration policy. Perhaps I missed the point of the film or maybe it didn’t translate very well and Italian and Romanian audiences will get more out it than I did.

It had good intentions and the few scenes where there was some dialogue and acting were strong and affecting. The redeeming feature of the film lies with the acting of Alexandra Pirici who plays the main character, Eva, with passion. Otherwise I was faced with ninety minutes of depressing landscape scene shots shown one after another with a message that could have been easily conveyed as a short.

If you like miserable films, with no real point and Joy Division played extremely loudly at random intervals you will probably love it.

I honestly feel quite bad about giving this movie a poor review, as Alexandra Pirici, who gave a Q&A after the screening explained the difficulties in getting work as an actor in Romania and life in general. One person asked what it was like filming in such an ugly location and she replied with utter honesty “I live in Romania! It didn’t seem that grim to me, and the people were all very friendly.” I will keep an eye out for her future work but I didn’t rate the director and will probably not see another of his films in the near future.

You can read more about this film, that was shown at LFF here.