ÎNTÂLNIRI ÎNCRUCISATE

A film that thematises apparently chance encounters between people, supposedly random meeting. The episodic narration is in line with the finding that any encounter – human interaction of whatever kind – is inevitably an experience of the self but equally affects those others who happen to be involved.

The cross-over narrative mode interweaves the episodes within a web of relationships, a form well known from films like Robert Altman’s SHORT CUTS. It seems apt to characterise the nature of human interaction.

Accordingly, the film begins with an episode in which a radio moderator is about to be brought together with an alleged doppelgänger who is serving a prison sentence. The figure of the female prison governor, however, already points to the next episode, in which she meets up with an old Finnish lover. He’s come to Romania for a congress of criminologists, and when they go up to his hotel room, they’re surprised to find a distraught young girl there. As we later find out, she’s the sister of the now released prisoner seen in the first episode – and in the course of the film a few more diffuse and chance-like interpersonal ripples spread out among the protagonists...