On the set of “Interior zero”, directed by Eugen Jebeleanu
Theater and film director Eugen Jebeleanu concluded this week the shooting of his second feature film, “Interior Zero”, a screen adaptation of the novel of the same name by Lavinia Braniște, with a screenplay adapted by Ioana Moraru.
It’s the 16th day of shooting out of 21 scheduled. The team is in a barbershop in the Titan district in Bucharest, and the first scene of the day captures the moment when the main character, Cristina, gets a razor-short haircut. Let me rephrase: the main character, played by three actresses, who today wear similar blue striped shirts, was trimmed by the barber played by Eugen Jebeleanu. One by one, each Cristina then sits in the chair and looks at herself in the mirror for minutes. Off-screen, you can hear Eugen Jebeleanu’s directions every now and then, this time in the role of the director:
“Stay in these thoughts for a while.”
“Discover something new you haven’t seen at yourself before.”
“Think of the feeling of closing a chapter.”
There is a lot of hair scattered on the floor, the same hair that these three women probably frowned on just a few hours before, looking at themselves in the mirror, saying it didn’t look good on them.
As in the novel, the film follows Cristina, a woman in her 30s, who is trapped in a tiring and dull job, trying to fumble for her way out. At the same time, she is trapped in a long-distance relationship with limited prospects and generally grapples with ordinary and recognizable situations that perfectly reflect the reality of our days – rents, complicated relationships with parents who have gone to work abroad, nights out. Or, as the author of the novel succinctly put it in an interview, “it’s about life in Romania in 2016, as seen by a woman in her thirties.”
This “mundane nature” is also what attracted Eugen Jebeleanu to the novel written by Lavinia Braniște, adapted by Ioana Moraru, the screenwriter he worked with for his debut feature, Poppy Field. “Interior Zero is the second film where I try to portray the generation I belong to by focusing on an anonymous character struggling with her own demons and constrained by an oppressive context. I see Cristina everywhere, I meet her at every step,” said the director at the beginning of the shooting.
If the story of a woman in her 30s trying to adapt to adult life in a hostile Bucharest had been done before, the greater challenge was to find the aesthetic form, conceived together with director of photography Marius Panduru. “A young woman struggling with the system, with her partner, with various inner demons, treated conventionally, would be another conventional film from the New Wave that we’ve seen,” Marius Panduru told me during lunch break. The solution they found was to tell the story of building this identity and to transfer it into the very form of the film: a fiction that shows the set and the behind-the-scenes world, breaking the traditional convention of cinematic realism, raising the question “Where does reality end and fiction begin?”. “That creates an irony,” says Panduru. “There are moments, which through certain distortions – little jokes in choreography, Eugen giving directions, moments when the team is present there fully knowingly -, create this effect,” he adds.
Filming began last fall with a casting workshop involving several actors and continued this September in Bucharest.
Cristina is played by Valentina Zaharia, Cristina Drăghici, and Cendana Trifan. The three actresses have collaborated with Eugen Jebeleanu in various theater productions, but for Valentina and Cristina, this is their first role in a feature film (Cendana previously worked on Poppy Field). They say they felt the book spoke to them about their lives, that they found themselves in the experiences the character goes through.
Cristina says she was interested in the conflict between how her character, who has a lot of accumulated anger, feels inside and what she ends up expressing. “I think at some point there is a release. She gradually breaks free from these difficult relationships, whether knowingly or otherwise, as if guided by the hand of fate.”
For Valentina, this part came at a time of many uncertainties: she had quit theater and taken a full-time job “where she does a lot of spreadsheets”. “I wasn’t necessarily doubting myself, but I didn’t know how I was perceived and into what I could turn my life back then. During the workshops (i.e. the first part of shooting, which took place last year and lasted four days), I just focused on the moment and tried to be curious. Now I think I can see more clearly a process of change in my life,” says Valentina.
Cendana was captivated by the similarities between Cristina’s simple life and her own experiences. Her character thinks a lot about our need to be “a little more special.” “Each of us deserves to be a little more special, and how can one feel like that if not by being paid attention by others? It’s about others, but also about us, how we perceive others. What do we do to have a better relationship with others? Cristina is not a victim.”
Cendana had cut her hair short before for another role, and the change wasn’t as abrupt as it was for Valentina and Cristina. During the meal break, she tries to lighten the mood by asking around, “Did I do my hair right?”
Before moving on to the second scene of the day, where the protagonist goes to visit an apartment in a residential complex, I asked Eugen Jebeleanu to lend some insight into his new film and his role shift from director to character. Below are some excerpts from the conversation.
***
What attracted me to the story, paradoxically – saying this because the film’s form is complex – is its mundane nature. I found this anonymity of the character to be an area worth exploring and exploiting in such a way that it becomes a portrait of a generation – a social painting, but without being something obvious; on the contrary, there should be a distance, detachment, perhaps even irony and criticism towards society and the constraints the main character faces.
My biggest fear regarding the portrayal of Cristina was for her not to be perceived as a victim. Although she is at a point in her life where she is “getting slapped” from all over, at the same time, the feeling I was trying to avoid – and which I detest in everyday life – is that of pity. I don’t want this character to elicit pity. I wanted it to be an empowering representation, showing that the challenges Cristina faces and the strength she has in her small actions, gestures, and decisions drive her to change something about herself and what happens around her. And it makes her, perhaps, stronger.
***
I was afraid to approach this story, which is about a woman. I thought I might not be the right person to tell it.
In order to connect with it and make it “mine”, I put myself in the character’s shoes. I tried to think of myself as Cristina. I also talked to my boyfriend Yan, who knows all my quests and fears, and he encouraged me to project myself into Cristina, with my shortcomings, rebellion, the feeling of ostracism due to my sexual orientation – just to give an example. I tried to meet the character and understand her from the inside, on a vulnerable and intellectual level, and see what happens to her. I wanted to avoid falling into cliché and stereotypes.
In terms of form, I turned to my experience as a theater director. I tried to bring as much of the theater conventions as possible, where the border between reality and fiction is very transparent, where I always question the role of the actor in what they play. Who plays whom? Is the actor played by the character or vice versa? And so on. I’m very interested in this ambiguity of the actor and the character-actor boundary. This is where the film’s aesthetics emerged from: by showing the set, the backstage, by playing the barber in the film, trying to put myself in the same “danger” that I ask of the actors or my collaborators.
***
By multiplying the main character, I wanted to portray more personality traits. The three actresses are extremely different, and that makes me very happy. Each has her energy, her story, and her professional path. At the same time, I believe they share the same issue somewhere. Even though it takes on different valences, the character bears the same drama, the same revolt. In this way, I think Cristina becomes a portrait of a generation, starting from the quests and anguish of an anonymous person we can all relate to – we see her everywhere, on the street, at the office, we interact with her.
***
Compared to the first film, everything is very different. First of all, because I feel more in control of myself. On the other hand, because I took a risk with this film in terms of form, it’s also satisfying because I’m trying to find my own artistic identity in cinema as well, not just in theater.
***
As I told the actors, I like to believe and hope and want “our art” to be in our service and not just us in its service, for there to be some kind of commitment through what we do. It’s not just an artistic product but also a civic manifesto. The fact that I tell this story in this way should make me think about what it means for me, what it means for the viewer, and how I can contribute to an evolution – whatever it may be, but primarily social and political – in a certain context.
***
I remember something Cristina said: “All my life, I’ve wanted to be a good child.” For me, this line encapsulates the whole character and the story. I think it resonates with everyone, whoever they are. And I wish that, on an emotional level, the audience sees their own personal story reflected on the screen, that it can be a prelude to life. I want them to feel encouraged, I want the film to drive them to make decisions, change something.
I wish there was more openness to other ways of telling a story, that we didn’t limit ourselves to the “conventional” cinematic realism. The film aims to play with it, not to be against it, not to contradict it, but to try an experiment, where realism becomes part of the ingredients we work with, it is not the main engine of how we present it.
***
Also starring in the film are Katia Pascariu, Alexandru Potocean, Emilian Oprea, Cristian Popa, Vlad Udrescu, Yann Verburgh, Irina Movilă, Dana Rogoz, and Ada Galeş. “Interior Zero” is a production by Icon Production, made with the support of the Romanian Film Center. The film is produced by Velvet Moraru, with cinematography by Marius Panduru, editing by Cătălin Cristuţiu, production design by Mălina Ionescu, and costume design by Velica Panduru.
Journalist. She worked for ten years at Adevărul and DoR as a reporter and for a while in communication. At Films in Frame, she coordinates the whole team with Laure, while also editing some of the articles about the film industry, trying to always find interesting angles to tell a story.