There’s
something novel happening at Bucharest Film Studios, Romania’s top production
facility and home to the new picture “Octave,” featuring veteran stage and
screen star Marcel Iures on a trip through memory and time to reexamine the
formative experiences of his youth. Helmed by a progressive international
production team of artists with multiple agendas—narrative, social and
personal—“Octave” is a marked thematic departure from, or perhaps reinvention
of, contemporary Romanian cinema.
When
aging Octave (Iures) returns to the Romanian countryside to sell his childhood
family home, he faces a personal reckoning of his unresolved adolescence. You
can’t go home again, the adage says, and for Octave, a flood of unresolved
events resurface, including a stint as a World War II soldier, the traumatic
death of his mother and fateful separation from his first love. Nostalgia, as
they say, can be a wonderful and horrible thing.
“Octave”—a
universal movie about making peace with past to understand the present—is an
independent production helmed by first-time feature director Serge Ioan Celebidachi (“Taming
the Apex”), shot by famed cinematographer Blasco Giurato (“Cinema Paradiso”)
and scored by Cesar-winning composer Vladimir Cosma (“Diva”).
It
is also a film that its production team believes will transcend what it is
commonly known as a “Romanian picture,” often charting the spoils of the
country’s Communist-steeped era in dark excursions like Cristian Mungiu’s harrowing
2007 drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.”
Co-written
by Celebidachi and British screenwriter James Olivier, “Octave,” by contrast,
is a departure from such gritty affairs both in narrative and aesthetic, a
movie that also looks back at another era—personal, not political—with a delicate
romanticism that often accompanies childhood introspection.
Longtime friends and collaborators Celebidachi and Olivier
nursed together the movie for decades, penning the first draft nearly 30 years ago. “We
started writing the film when we were 18 years old,” said Olivier, “and
as we grew older and matured, the themes did as well.”
Added
Celebidachi, “We had originally written the film in French; the Romanian part
came later. We translated it into English
and once thought we would do it in America. But put into the context of this
country, it is more interesting because during almost 50 years of communism,
Octave did not have access to the house, and his visit now immediately sends
him back to his childhood.”
Though
64-year-old star Iures—a veteran of stage and screen best known to
Western audiences for such action fare as “Mission: Impossible,” “The
Peacemaker” and “Layer Cake”—has been aged two decades to play octogenarian
Octave, he does not see the role so much as a summation of his long career, but
rather as a “beautiful gift.” He explained, “It’s not a summation, but just the
beginning of a new wave. And for me, it was love at first sight. It’s about me
in the next decades; about you; about everybody.”
Award-winning
DP Giurato is no stranger to nostalgic memory pieces, having lensed one of the
most moving final sequences in movie history for Giuseppe Tornatore’s revered
1990 Oscar winner “Cinema Paradiso.” Yet despite his storied career, Giurato calls
“Octave” his “testament on 35mm,” eschewing modern digital photography for the
fluid richness of film, instrumental in texture for a film about long lost
memories.
We
can be sure Giurato’s passion will be evident in each widescreen frame. “I have
totally fallen in love with this project,” he explained. “It is telling a story
that concerns the whole world. In my long experience in film, I can feel when a
film is important, and this one is very important. Miracles can happen, and for
me this film is a miracle.”
The
increased color palette provided by the 35mm was instrumental to Giurato’s vision
of color density variations during Octave’s journey, the film stock’s latitude
accommodating a spectrum of visual distinctions representing the protagonist’s
shifting emotional states. It also provided for an “impressionistic” depiction
of both the pastoral surroundings of Octave’s family home as well as his own impressions
of youth.
Director
Celebidachi spent roughly two months shooting “Octave,” both in the studio and
on location in the tiny town of Câmpulung at the foot of the Carpathian
Mountains, overseen by producer Adela Vrinceanu Celebidachi, a force of nature
who secured the budget for what is Romania’s most expensive picture to date. “Octave
is part of a new wave in Romanian cinema that shows the country in a positive
light abroad,” said Vrinceanu Celebidachi, adding, “I am certain everybody will like seeing
Romania as a very beautiful place.”
Indeed,
the beautiful Romanian countryside surrounds much of Bucharest Film Studios, a
major operation with thousands of feet of soundstages and home to such
international productions as History’s Boston-set cable miniseries “Sons of
Liberty” and Norway’s 2015 Oscar submission, the tsunami disaster picture “The
Wave,” which made considerable use of the studio’s cavernous water tank.
The
construction of Octave’s beauteous mansion inside one of the studio’s massive
soundstages was a feat of movie magic, worthy of Hollywood’s golden age but also
borne of practical necessity. The home, featuring fully decorated multiple
floors and rooms of antique furniture, musical instruments and period props,
was constructed after the on-location house proved, according to Vrinceanu Celebidachi, to be a bit too authentic. “It was very old, and
every time you took a step it made a sound. So we completely recreated the
home, to almost perfect specifications, right in the studio.”
Produced
by Astra Entertainment with Oblique Media and CelebFilms UK, Octave is currently in
post-production with scheduled completion later this year, well-positioned for
festival consideration in 2017. Additional cast includes Victor Rebengiuc, Andi Vasluianu,
Alessia Tofan, Lia Bugnar, Ioan Andrei Ionescu, Mihai Dinvale and Maria Obretin.
