RYNA (2005) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Roxandra Zenide
Dorothea Petre, Valentin Popescu, Matthieu Rozé,
Nicolai Praida, Theodor Delciu, George Custura
A coming-of-age character study from Romania, about a 16-year-old girl named Ryna, who works as a mechanic in her father's garage. Ryna wears coveralls most of the time and keeps her hair cut short, on orders from her old man, who wanted her to be a boy. But there's no hiding the fact that Ryna's no boy, and the men in the village are starting to take notice. Ryna's aware of it, too, and wouldn't mind looking pretty and putting on a dress once in a while. Played with understated sympathy by Dorothea Petre, Ryna is resilient, free-spirited and instinctively smart, stuck in a limiting, rigidly controlled existence she longs to break out of. In the end, she does get away. Something bad happens, and she has to. It's hard to say where her life will go from there, but you hope it's someplace more welcoming, or at least less restrictive, than the one she's leaving behind.
