Mother-daughter dynamics are explored in First of All, Felicia.(S)mothering, Romanian style
By Miranda Inganni
This New Lights Competition film opens with Felicia (Ozana Oancea) waking up on her final day of her annual visit with her parents in Romania. When her driver to the airport cancels, 40-year-old Felicia is left taking a cab. If that were not bad enough, her mother (Ileana Cernat) insists on joining her for the ride. When Felicia misses her flight back to The Netherlands, she frantically calls her ex-husband, Maarten, to arrange for their son’s pick up from camp. While Felicia deals with her parents and sister in Romania, she also has to take care of her family in The Netherlands.
The majority of the film takes place in the airport while Felicia tries to reschedule her flight. Her mother’s “help” seems more of an hindrance than anything, and it doesn’t make matters better that both her father and sister keep calling her with his or her own suggestions of what she can do to expedite her return. As Felicia’s frustration at trying to find a flight increases, so does the friction between mother and daughter. Felicia finally speaks her mind, letting her emotions lose.
Filmed in sunny yellows – almost sepia tones – the warmth of the visuals betray the tension between mother and daughter.
Directed by Melissa de Raaf and Razvan Radulescu, First of All, Felicia feels more like a play than a film with its minimal locations and considerable dialogue. Moreover, the story offers little new in the way of mother-daughter dynamics. However Oancea and Cernat offer powerful performances, perhaps drawing from their own experiences?
On another note, First of All, Felicia is in Romanian and Dutch. The Romanian dialogue is accompanied with subtitles; the Dutch, for some odd reason, is not.
(First of All, Felicia is scheduled to screen Oct. 31 at 1 p.m., at the Mann Chinese Theater 1, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com)
