One Floor Below

Radu Muntean’s long-awaited follow-up to his 2010 critical hit Tuesday, After Christmas, is a simmering anti-thriller about a family man, Sandu (Teodor Corban), who overhears the conclusion of a heated argument between his downstairs neighbor Laura (Maria Popistașu) and her boyfriend Vali (Iulian Postelnicu). When Laura is found dead in her apartment the next day, it appears that Sandu may have witnessed the prelude to a too-close-to-home murder. He soon finds his ability to keep his head down tested by the need to protect his family as the menacing Vali begins inserting himself in their lives. Muntean gracefully and economically weds 19th-century Russian literature’s preoccupation with hard questions of morality and the Romanian New Wave’s exceptional attentiveness to the rhythms and political resonances of daily life.