The part of my brain that houses the psychosexual thriller concept starring him and Colman Domingo just lit up like a Christmas tree. The photographer ate this.
“The most attention-grabbing performance comes from Stan, an actor whose considerable range is too rarely acknowledged, working here in a mix of English and his mother tongue, Romanian.” 👏🏻
Sebastian Stan giving a career-best performance once again? 👑
“The standing ovation was filled with cheers of “Bravo,” as an overwhelmed Stan, in particular, vacillated between shaking his head in disbelief and fighting back tears.”
The little boy from Romania made it ❤️🩹
I’m gonna allow myself one petty moment that I will likely delete: I hope that Sebastian fan who called me a clout chaser for defending his partner from invasive weirdos is having a wonderful day. 😉
Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord is one of the finest films of the year, a tense and captivating drama about parents accused of physically abusing their children. Mungiu brilliantly takes us through the harrowing legal process, Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan riveting and Oscar-worthy.
FJORD is a brilliantly scripted, masterfully crafted ice-cold drama from Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu. It lives comfortably in the gray areas of morality, where two parents think their disciplinary methods are the right way to raise their children even as laws, cultural differences, and personal values bump up against their more conservative beliefs. Refuses to give any easy answers and it’s that level of complexity I most adored as it affords Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve the chance to deliver two nuanced, ambiguous, and restrained performances that constantly had me shifting sympathies and feeling deeply uncomfortable, while I wrestled with and questioned the film’s challenging themes. The kids may or may not be alright, but for Mungiu, this is yet another exceptional examination of societal decay at its most fascinating, unsettling, and darkly compelling.
A bit more on Fjord’s acting: Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve are beautifully restrained, avoiding the easy big swings that the story might suggest and going for carefully modulated choices. Despite that, their bodies carry and radiate a deeply-unsettling, suffocating tension.
Fjord might be Cannes’s most challenging film, carefully unpacking the messiness of cultural assimilation, child protection, and religious tolerance. A bit too broad for deep emotional impact, but asks important questions. Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve are subtly brilliant.