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Marilena from P7
The poster of the film (without text).
Directed by	Cristian Nemescu
Written by	Tudor Voican Cristian Nemescu
Produced by	Cristian Nemescu Ada Solomon (exec. prod.)
Starring	Mădălina Ghiţescu Gabriel Huian
Edited by	Cătălin Cristuţiu
Music by	Andrei Toncu
Distributed by	MediaPro Pictures
Release dates	May, 2006 (France, Cannes) June 4, 2006 (Romania, TIFF)
Running time	45 minutes
Country	Romania
Language	Romanian
Budget	$35,00

Marilena from P7 (Romanian: Marilena de la P7) is a medium-length Romanian film, directed by Cristian Nemescu, first released in 2006. The film became recognized in 2006, when it was nominated for the Semaine de la critique section of the 59th Cannes Film Festival.

Being Cristian Nemescu's last completed project, the film stars Mădălina Ghiţescu as Marilena and Gabriel Huian as Andrei. Originally, the film was intended to be used as an exercise, and was not supposed to be longer than seven minutes. In the end, the project evolved to an unusual length of 45 minutes. Being about teenage love (a subject preferred by the director), the film was received positively by the public; it impressed through its unitary view and the way the story, together with the picture and the sound, combine together into a new and organic way, by using innovative, unusual techniques.

Plot

In a suburb of Bucharest, a 13-year-old boy, Andrei (Gabriel Huian), together with some of his friends, watches the prostitutes' show every night from a rooftop and how they are being taken by drivers. The boy falls in love with one of the girls, called Marilena (Mădălina Ghiţescu), and finds out that he needs a decent sum of money in order to approach her. Thus, he steals his father's (Gabriel Spahiu) salary money and goes to the prostitutes' meeting place. Marilena's pimp (Andi Vasluianu) is also present, and only agrees to send Marilena and another prostitute with the boy to a nearby pub, where the Rom Elvis is singing (played by the singer Elvis Romano, who translated Elvis Presley's lyrics into his own language). The prostitutes spend a little time with Andrei, rather playing with him, telling him that he needs a car in order to date them, after which they leave. The boy asks Marilena for her phone number, and she writes something in his hand.

Andrei sends a dedication for "Marilena from P7", to the local radio station. The prostitute is in an old man's hose, listening to the radio, and the song is Are You Lonesome Tonight?, also played by Elvis Presley.

Among her clients, Marilena finds herself attracted to a man, nicknamed Giani (Cătălin Paraschiv), with whom she falls in love. One night, however, she spots Giani in his car in front of a store, accompanied by another woman. After seeing this, Marilena becomes very discouraged.

Andrei finds a way to get hold of a car and plans to steal his father's trolleybus. He manages to do so, together with his friends. His father sees him and starts following the boys with another driver, his colleague. Arriving at the prostitutes' meeting place, the boys can't find Marilena. Andrei recognizes Giani's car parked in front of block P7, so he goes in.

Marilena and Giani were in fact in her apartment; the girl goes for a minute to the restroom. Andrei manages to sneak into the apartment, and watches how, while still talking to Giani, Marilena cuts her jugular vein. After realizing what had happened, Giani becomes frightened and runs away; the pimp sees him leaving in a rush, so he goes to the apartment to see what happened. Meanwhile, Andrei goes into the room and looks down at Marilena who is lying down, with blood spilled over her. The news about Marilena's suicide spread fast around the neighborhood.

Cast

Lead roles

• Marilena is played by the Romanian actress Mădălina Ghiţescu (born July 29, 1978), became known to the Bucharestian public for the roles she played at Theater Studio Casandra (Romanian: Studioul de teatru "Casandra") and The Very Small Theater (Romanian: Teatrul Foarte Mic).

• Andrei was played by Gabriel Huian (untrained actor, previously appearing in a video clip that caught the director's attention). He was Cristian Nemescu's preferred choice from the beginning, however a rigorous casting still took place. Apparently attracted to Mădălina Ghiţescu, Huian showed a different attitude than that of other candidates, which only convinced the director further.

Other roles

• Mihai, Andrei's brother – Cristi Olesher
• Andrei's mother – Aura Călăraşu
• Andrei's father – Gabriel Spahiu
• The pimp – Andi Vasluianu
• Giani – Cătălin Paraschiv

Production

From project to production

The film's idea resulted from a small scale exercise between Nemescu and Liviu Marghidan during their time at university (precisely in 2003). The original idea belonged to Cătălin Mitulescu and Andreei Vălean; the only part of the original story that was kept is that of a group of boys trying to steel a trolleybus in order to get to some prostitutes.

Initially the film was planned as a short fiction, the project evolving during 2005. At the time, Nemescu also had planned what would later become the long fiction California Dreamin', impossible to film at that moment, deciding that Marilena from P7 could prove an useful exercise for both director and actors. Thus the screenplay was rewritten and filming started with a very reduced budget of only $14,000 (money collected by Nemescu by participating at various film festivals, with older short fictions). During development, however, the film received new funds, though still modest ones, thus the actors and a part of the team accepted to work for free.

Filming also took place in 2005, near the marketplace of the Bucharestian neighborhood Rahova. The chosen area raised a few difficulties related to safety. However, the production benefited from its picturesque view, rendering the scenography and the original music unnecessary. The omnipresent manele also found their way into the movie, as background music.

In order for the story to go as it should, we needed a 'low-income' area. At the same time, the place also needed to be visually pleasant, and to meet our needs from the technical point of view – meaning it should be large enough for a trolleybus to fit in, and it should also look plausible. For almost a full week we looked around the whole Bucharest. Being in Rahova, we arrived in a place where there were some blocks painted by Mayor Marian Vanghelie, and behind those there was a ghetto – yes, that's the term – but it was a very picturesque place, which was good for what we wanted.

— Cristian Nemescu

For a long period of time the project was entitled Trolley Blues; Cristian Nemescu gave up this title, worrying that there might be a large discrepancy between the equivocal name and the actual, very direct content of the movie.

Post-production

Another important aspect is that the entire filmmaking process was much more complex than that of most Romanian movies made after 1948. The picture stands out through the use of various effects, such as split-screen, and the use of hand-held filming.

The film's music and sound was also thoroughly post-processed by the project's sound designer, Andrei Toncu, mainly to improve the quality of the recordings (the budget did not allow for complex equipment to be used), but also for creative interest. The movie's background music has reduced volume, following the emotional evolution of the characters—Toncu combining the background music (recorded with, or without intention) and a series of effects characteristic to the electronic and concrete music. However, a few distinct moments can be observed in the film's music, either composed by Andrei Toncu (Andrei imagining stealing the trolleybus), or already existing recordings, edited so that they would integrate into the movie's atmosphere (Elvis Presley's dedication is dynamically equalized to suggest the shift from one radio to another). Another scene in which multiple layers of sound were used was the radio show heard in Giani's car about the breeding of Memestra brassicae butterflies.

Reception

Public reception

The Romanian public first found out about the film's participation at the 59th Cannes Film Festival (May 2006), along with two other Romanian films (Cătălin Mitulescu's The Way I Spent the End of the World and Corneliu Porumboiu's 12:08 East of Bucharest). Marilena from P7 was nominated for the Semaine de la critique section of the French festival.

Very well received by the different categories of the public, from critics to publishers, and simple spectators, Corneliu Porumboiu's film '12:08 East of Bucharest' Just as well was received, especially by young people, Cristian Nemescu's movie, 'Marilena from P7' (a melancholic ghetto tragedy, with a stolen trolleybus... for reaching the girl's heart, who is a gentle and honest mistress, the story of initiation and the price to pay for wanting to find out faster, what comes with age).

— Larisa Turea, about Cannes 2006, in the newspaper Timpul, May 30

Cristian Nemescu's 'Marilena from P7' is a medium-length film, which at Cannes was viewed by a hall full of people, and which was intensely applauded. It was also said that it is movie without mistake. A shocking story about a ghetto from the outskirts of Bucharest (where, for example, an old man, scourged by life, slick and misogynist, plants his little garden on the rooftop of a block), with a kid that would do anything - steal his parents' whole salary or even a trolleybus, for his beloved - and a lively prostitute from P7. Children actors with an ingenuous talent, and dialogs that fit together perfectly and sound natural, a splendid picture, a big hearted pimp played by Andi Vasluianu, all in one a portion of highest quality cinematography.

— Laura Popescu, in Aperi Tiff, June 4

The Romanian premiere took place on June 4, 2006 at the "Transylavania" International Film Festival, in Cluj-Napoca. In Bucharest, a first display of the movie was organized on September 8, 2006, in a square established for this purpose on Calea Rahovei Street. The public, as well as the critics from the country, received the movie very well, but the difficulty caused by the movie's unusual duration only allowed for the movie to be on display on a few other occasions. The same problem was encountered when the movie was sent to film festivals outside Romania, being either rejected due to the impossibly of being included in any of the standard categories or included as a short fiction (for example, at Brooklyn).

In the summer of 2006, Nemescu also started the production of California Dreamin'. The filming took place in the June-August interval. By the end of August, the film was nearing its completion; on August 24, 2006, however, Nemescu and Andrei Toncu (sound engineer for the new project as well) died in a car accident in Bucharest. Following the accident, the Romanian public, as well as those from abroad, offered wider attention to the productions of the two cineasts, including Marilena from P7, their first notable success. One year after the accident, the event was commemorated in the country through various displays, public meetings and debates. On August 24, 2007, Marilena from P7 had its premiere at Stockholm during the second Romanian Film Days. Romanian people, from the diaspora, as well as Swedish spectators, were present.

Critic reception

Marilena from P7 was received by journalists as an attempt to attract attention over various social phenomena (prostitution, the living conditions in the Bucharestian low-income neighborhoods, etc.), and in some scenes even being presented as a documentary. In reality, Nemescu wanted for the public to concentrate on the love story lived of Andrei:

All the scripts I get involved with have an essential story, and give birth to emotions that reach a lot of people's hearts. So, in this case, the thing that motivated me was the subject itself, the thoughts and emotions of a 13 year old kid who falls in love. I never had any interest to describe a social reality - like prostitution, for example - and the screenplay doesn't concentrate at all at 'scanning' the problems of our society. The new, innovating element consists of the child's emotions, what he feels and the human relations between the two characters. The reality of Romania is there only for decorative purposes, and I am against people struggling to present the 'Romanian dirt' trough movies.

— Cristian Nemescu

I have had roles as a prostitute before. For example, the role I had to play for my graduation exam was from the play "I'm called Isbjorg. I'm a lioness", directed by Gianina Cărbunariu, where it was about a prostitute murdering her client. The characters shouldn't be looked at, at a global level, thinking 'They're just prostitutes, what's the big deal? They're all the same'. No, first of all they're humans, and they have a soul. This also is the case of Marilena: if you were to popularize the subject, who is she? A prostitute and just. But the important thing is who she truly is: how she thinks, what her feelings are. She is a very sensible person, just that the environment in which she lives in stops her from showing this side of her, and hide the fact that she is in love with a certain client. The unusual thing about her is that, despite of the life she has, she trusts people.

— Mădălina Ghiţescu

Marilena from P7 also attracted the critics' attention due to its use explicit verbal and visual content. Cristian Nemescu said that this kind of scenes were a necessarily element for the realism of the movie, declaring himself a partisan of explicit content.

The film continues to be appreciated for its experimental nature, its camera angles and montage elements being treated in an unusual manner, while the fiction elements of the screenplay hint of magic realism. In this sense, it is important to mention that the days in the film are separated by Andrei's erotic dreams. In his dreams, the differences between him and Marilena are partially removed, either by lowering the rooftop on which the boy stands to ground level or by debarking the girl from a breast-shaped UFO that scares the neighbors away. Another fictional element is Marilena's capacity of provoking short circuits, in moments in which she is very emotionally active (e.g., when Andrei touches her in the bar's restroom, or when the whole neighborhood is cut from electricity when she cries near the high voltage electrical box).

Visually, this is how I thought this moment should have been, the split-screen being mentioned in the script. I felt the need to see everyone at the same time. If they were each at a time, it wouldn't have had the same impact. It was a lot funnier to see all the bitches at the same time, and all the kids (masturbating) simultaneously, I like this moment.

— Cristian Nemescu

Awards and nominations

The following list includes the most notable nominations and awards the film received.

References and footnotes

1. "Aperi TIFF" (PDF) (Press release) (in Romanian). Transylvania International Film Festival. 2006-06-04. Retrieved 2007-04-25.
2. ^ "Sympathetic, Marilena from P7 was passing through" (in Romanian). liternet.ro. December 2006. Retrieved 2007-04-20. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
3. ^ "Movie details". 2006 Brooklyn Film Festival. Retrieved 2007-04-20.
4. ^ "List of participants - 2006 Cannes Film Festival". British Film Institute. Retrieved 2007-04-20. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
5. ^ "Marilena from P7" (Press release) (in Romanian). Eva. April or May 2006. Retrieved 2007-04-26. {{cite press release}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
6. The film is of medium length, lasting longer than a typical short-length movie (usually under 20 minutes), but shorter than a long movie (lasting over one hour). The medium-length movie is harder to distribute to the public as compared to other categories; while it is too long for showing to the public as a short-length movie, it also is too short to show as a full-length movie (usually expected to run up to two hours).
7. ^ "Together with Marilena at Cannes" (in Romanian). Cotidianul. May (?) 2006. Retrieved 2007-04-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. ^ Extracted from Mădălina Ghiţescu's speech, from a Q&A about the movie's premiere in Stockholm, on August 24, 2007.
9. "Mădălina Ghiţescu's profile page" (in Romanian). cinemagia.ro. Retrieved 2007-04-21. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
10. "Mădălina Ghiţescu's personal site" (in Romanian). Retrieved 2007-04-21.
11. "Marilena from P7, Nemescu's Film at Cannes!" (Press release). cinemagia.ro. 2004-04-26. Retrieved 2008-04-23. {{cite press release}}: Unknown parameter |languge= ignored (help)
12. Nemescu, Cristian (April/May (?) 2006). "Interview with Nemescu" (Interview). Interviewed by Paul S. odhan. Retrieved 2008-04-23. {{cite interview}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
13. "Nemescu and Solomon, film display in Rahova" (in Romanian). stiri.acasa.ro. 2006-09-06. Retrieved 2008-04-25. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
14. The movies invited at Romanian Film Days in Stockholm took place at the "Zita" cinema, during August 23 and 26, 2007. Nemescu's movie was on display in the same schedule with Trafic, Cătălin Mitulescu's short fiction, and Lampa cu căciulă, by Radu Jude. At the end of the display, on August 24, the movie critic Adina Brădeanu held a Q&A with Mădălina Ghiţescu in the presence of the spectators. The writer Gabriela Melinescu was also present at the event.
15. ^ Sheila Seacroft (2006-06-09). "Marilena de la P7". Jigsaw Lounge. Retrieved 2008-04-23. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
16. ^ "A few of the film's awards". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-04-21. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
17. "TIFF 2006 nearing its end!" (Press release) (in Romanian). liternet.ro. Retrieved 2007-04-21.
18. "Festival Palmares". "Milano" Film Festival. Retrieved 2007-04-22.
19. "2006 Festival Awards" (PDF). "Molodist" International Film Festival.
20. "Marilena from P7 at Geneva" (in Romanian). cinemagia.ro. 2006-10-30. Retrieved 2008-04-22. {{cite news}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
21. ^ "2006 Festival Palmares" (PDF). International Film and Television Festival "Cinéma tout écran", Geneva. Cite error: The named reference "toutecran" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
22. ^ "Nemescu - Award in the US - Marilena from P7" (Press release) (in Romanian). Suplimental cultural. May 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-22.
23. "2007 Festival Awards" (in French). "Cinéma tout Court" Festival. Retrieved 2007-04-22.
24. "2007 Winners List". "Syracuse" International Film Festival. Retrieved 2007-04-22.

External links

The movie's profile on various sites

• Movie profile on Internet Movie Database
• Movie profile on Cinemagia
• Movie profile on PORT.ro
• Movie profile on All Movie Guide

Trailer and photographs

• The movie's trailer, on YouTube
• Movie poster (with text)
• Photo gallery (photographs from the film and the shooting), hosted by OutNow.ch

Online articles and interviews

• Article originally published in the "Eva" magazine, a dialog between Greta Harja, Nemescu and Mădălina Ghiţescu before the Cannes Festival
• Interview by Cristian Nemescu to Paul S. Odhan
• Interview by Mădălina Ghiţescu to Paul S. Odhan

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