Bibliotheque Pascal

Finally, after a long time, I got back to watching a film from Eastern Europe. I really like Romania in movies, and I have to say, this is a real gem among European films. At the very least, a gem in psychedelicness, because on the border of reality, an incredibly fantastic story is told and I was a part of it for almost two hours. Evil human traits mix with the worst ones and a minimum of good. It's all still strangely nice and not explicitly bad, as some scenes could be. Anyway, three stars are just right in my opinion. I didn't know what to think about the movie at the end, but it's true that for a whole 105 minutes it held me, as if chained. (08/29/2012)

Bibliotheque Pascal could be anything. A drama of a mother trying to find her way back to her child, a crazy surrealist game, a poetic comedy with fantastic elements, a crime story, or an erotic film about the bizarre world of sexual fetishism. It has the potential for many things and raises many expectations. However, the film fails to fulfill them. In the end, it is just a screenplay that is not fully developed, an interesting festival trick that shows how wide it can spread across genres. It resembles a billiard ball that innocently bounces off the edge of the table several times and eventually rests in the middle without energy, without successfully pocketing the ball. It is capable of appealing mainly to film fans for whom it is most important to distinguish themselves from mainstream audiences and to discover and decipher messages that are inaccessible to ordinary mortals. It is a strange film that sends a signal about its creator's ambitions more than anything else. If the only explanation for what is seen is the desire to see oneself in a better light and to excuse one's mistakes, then I have already seen much better films and better scripts on similar themes. Overall impression: 45%. (06/27/2015)

An artistically crafted film at first glance, aiming to enchant with its form and, among other things, also to evoke a sense of depression in the viewer about what they're actually watching. It's an allegory for the conditions in Eastern and Western Europe, showing that finding a better place to live doesn't necessarily mean starting to live better. The form didn't enchant me, and the synopsis intrigued me more than the outcome. (10/07/2016)