On the beautiful yet desolate Rumanian Black-Sea coast, an encounter takes place between a lighthouse keeper and a woman who would appear to have lost her way. This chance meeting engenders an uncommonly soft-hearted love, a slow discovery of each other.The story is based on an ironic anecdote by Andrzej Wajda about everyday life in Poland. Boy meets girl and they spend the night together. Next morning the boy gets up and goes out to shop for breakfast. When he returns, he finds himselffacing a row of identical apartment blocks. He doesn’t know the girl’s name nor her address. He is no longer able to find her. Dumitrescu: ‘This story could be interpreted as a criticism of communist society, but after travelling in the West for some time, I have discovered this criticism to be applicable to all countries. Individuals are victims of systems they created themselves.’The film is shot in black & white, which with the striking music emphasises the mood of existential desperation. Dumitrescu’s film evokes a bare and deserted world, a world where ‘ the sun is cold. There would appear to be no place for hope.The film is largely a road movie, a quest, and as a result also gives a documentary portrait of a strangely empty and depopulated Rumania. Even an endless row of apartment blocks where the maze ends hardly looks as if it has any inhabitants.
