★★★★☆

THE role of parents in a grown-up child’s life is painfully and intimately explored in this subtly affecting drama from celebrated Romanian director Cristian Mungiu.

Romeo (Adrian Titieni) is a well-meaning physician living in a small town in Romania, getting by day-to-day with hopes of his beloved daughter Eliza (Maria-Victoria Dragus) heading off to study and live abroad, something he was never given the chance to do.

However, the day before an important exam that will determine her place at a prestigious English university, Eliza is attacked and nearly raped by a stranger in broad daylight. She is left with a cast on her arm and her self-confidence shattered, putting a weight on her decision to leave as planned. Romeo then feels he needs to take matters into his own hands.

Much like Mungiu’s Palme d’Or-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Graduation exhibits a fittingly clinical and palpably uncomfortable atmosphere as it looks at how seemingly ironclad personal morality can clash with institutional bureaucracy and what it takes to get certain things done in a society where life opportunities are scarce.

For instance, Romeo makes use of a contact he has within the police force to both search for the attacker and to pull some strings with those in charge of Eliza’s exams, methods that go against the sense of ethics he has tried to bestow.

Mungiu’s film is a rich character study of a man who deeply loves his daughter and not only wants her to succeed in life for her own sake but in a way that burdens her, however subtly, with his own insecurities, failures and lack of ambition; her success would be his success.

We’re left to ponder if his actions – at first extremely out-of-character but increasingly fitting the more of his personal life is revealed – are morally justifiable and, most importantly, if that even matters at all.