So i decided one day to go and see "Hello! How are you?". As i entered the cinema i started mentally preparing myself for an artsy flick with satiric humor based on morbid irony that in the end would leave me with a slightly bad taste in my mouth but because of which i could brag that i had seen a deep and meaningful motion picture.
No more than five minutes into it i was surprised to see the rear end of a beautiful young woman performing oral sex on an adolescent male. I don't mean to be shallow, it's just that the movie states right from the beginning that it will most definitely not bore you. Don't get me wrong, this is not your average toilet humor, foul language and drug abuse infested teen comedy. If I were to describe the plot and feel of the movie by comparison with other motion pictures, the exposition describes a family much like the one in "American Beauty" while the teenage lead develops in a matter familiar with "Liceenii", with a lot more intercourse. However, the solutions to the problems that the characters encounter are very different, as their personality.
The first thing that I noticed that was significantly different from what i was used to as far as Romanian movies go was the incredible camera work (and probably post-production). The cinematography in "Hello! How are you?" is exceptional by any standard. No movie of any genre or type comes to mind with better camera work. Every scene is adequately lit, with no obvious additional spot lights or flood lights, keeping everything as natural as possible. Characters and items are very well centered, and frequent use of depth of field and focus techniques to keep the audience alert even when the camera is still. The attention to detail is astonishing, the film being riddled with very minutely crafted closeups (makeup artists also deserve credit here). A lot of scenes are reminiscent of very modern and youthful video advertisements with the characters being followed by the camera as they walk around the capital with little else happening while lines of chat fill in the storyline. Unfortunately, the choice of font for the aforementioned text is lacking, consisting of "Times New Roman" which i find down right appalling. A Humanist typeface similar to Segoe WP would have blended in far better. However, i was pleased with there rest of the typography choices.
A lot painstaking work has obviously gone into the soundtrack, from opera voices singing the lines of the characters to piano music synchronized to keyboard presses, yet another aspect of the film that raises the bar.
The acting is at the very least good. I find the para-verbal, nonverbal communication as well as body language in this movie to be very challenging for the actors but they did not disappoint. Some lines are exaggerated to emphasize the comical effect while others are numbed for the same reason. I've never found Romanian humor this appealing before. Situational humor is abundant. I will admit, "Hello! How are you?" might be more properly savored by Romanians, simply because the whole context feels familiar. However, it is in no way unaccessible for the rest of the audience, on the contrary, it offers a delightful depiction of a modern Romanian family.
As far as the plot goes, character evolution, development and motivation is adequate, enticing and unexpected in some aspects. I was puzzled somewhat by the sudden change of personality in the lead teenage character, which went from Casanova to physics geek overnight. In my opinion the vanity, arrogance and confidence that comes with exercising your masculinity with such a frequency at that age should develop the character very differently and frequent outbursts of melancholy and even self pity and disappointment mixed with anxiety are not compatible with such testosterone levels, albeit we are talking about a hormone governed teenager. The script comforts the audience up to a certain point with predictable turns of events, however, the suspense builds up progressively and the climax comes when least expected, following a different narrative approach than what the viewers were used to up to that point.
The denouement is somewhat open ended and remarkably optimistic despite the brake-up that the family undergoes. Finishing his right of passage the young male character defines himself, thus establishing his identity as an adult.
