The movie uses many of the Dogma film making techniques, so no much trickery and lots of plot and good acting.

The main plot circles around a couple of female students and their problems to solve a big problem of one of them. The action develops in Romania in 1987 for a couple of days that literally change the life of both girls. The 4 months refers to one of the girls (I shall not ay more), the 3 weeks I  don't really know :-)

The great thing about the film is that the unnamed star of the film is Soviet Romania. The characters  just try to get on with their lives but the director shows many details that permeate the daily life of all the people involved. Trying to book an hotel? By phone? You must be mad. You must do it in person (!!!) and confirm in person 24 hours before the day of your booking (double !!!).

Life is grim and miserable, except for the well connected that show a clasism and elitism worth of any bourgeois in the evil West.

The movie has a couple of stomach churning moments. The baddy is so but has some morals and cares up to a point for his victims.

In conclusion a very entertaining movie worth watching, it may scoop the Oscar to best foreign film next year, but it would not surprise me if USians mistaken the picture for what it is not, given the apparent main topic, which is an excuse to develop the characters.

In attendance was the director and the leading female Anamaria Marinca (http://www.lastampa.it/multimedia/cannes/3632_album/Anamaria-Marinca.jpg ). She did not look as glamorous, actually she looked downright scruffy, but she is a Londoner, so no problem then.

In the way out the organizers did not commit the same mistake as yesterday and we were herded out of the cinema by the fire exit. There was great commotion in the entrance, it may have been Brad Pitt since his movie was on show afterwards.

Later on I watched "Opium: diary of a mad woman" which shows pretty much what it says in the tin.

The movie is a bit too chatty (using voice overs) but it is OK after a while. This movie is a strange beast. Its heart is Hungarian (director, location, script, etc.) but the actors are from all around Europe and we were told that was filmed in English, dubbed to Hungarian and the version we saw was another English version from the Hungarian dubbing. Odd.

The history moves around a doctor, who is addict to heroin, a womaniser, and who also writes but uses the drug as a means to break writer's block. He is a new convert to the teaching of Freud and gets a job in  mental clinic run by a doctor who is a self confessed convinced user of medieval medical cures for mentally ill people.

One of the patients is an attractive woman (the mad one of the title) obsessed with masturbating and sex in general, who thinks the devil wants to posses her sexually and whose only way to express herself is a manic need to write at all times.

These 2 characters find each other and lots of tension ensues. Lots of masochistic treatment is thrown on the way of the woman (electric shocks, partial drowning, cold showers, forced feeding, the full works) but the worst is when writing is forbidden to her.

The female role is played by the Norwegian Kirsti Stubø (http://www.ukm.no/tidligereukm/bilder/1075460187.jpg ), who was there and was extremely gracious. She is the archetypical Scandinavian platinum blonde, gorgeous, and to top that, a great actress, she stole the movie.

The movie is based in real manuscripts of a famous  Hungarian writer who happened to be a doctor, heroin addict, womaniser and tried to kill his wife... He also published the diaries of one of her patients, extracts of one of his books and the diaries are the substance of the voice overs.

Recommended, but some patience is needed because the movie can be slow at times.

So no real celebrity spotted, but instead good actresses, which in much more satisfying.