Pororoca's reviews
Media reviews
El Mundo
The camera barely does the most difficult part of it: registering the speed of the downfall. First is concern; a bit later is nausea, and, as the tumor grows, it ends in simple desperation. The viewer is invited to make the main character's pain his own. With him, one lives the first moment of doubt; with him, one suffers the first rumor of a vague hope; with him, obsession and, which is worse, guilt, grow. All of it without pause, not leaving the faintest of hope interrupt the certainty of suffering.
Cinemanía
Convincing, Popescu expands in time the shots (and the film) and doesn't spare any detail of the increasing doubt in which the character is immersed (Dumitrache, winner of best actor in Donostia), surrounded by stranger's looks and a light so soft and nice that it makes more anguished the contrast of the torture the characters goes through and, by mistake, the viewer, unready for the final hit.
El Periódico
Romanian director Constantin Popescu uses a contained style, with long shots in which the tension is always about to blow up until it breaks in a cathartic, savage and almost inhuman chaos. It's a crude movie, an unforgiving reflexion on pain and abyss as a pit of internal torture.
ABC
The Romanian work of planning and miseé-en-scene squeezes the tension and abuses of the reverberation with long and unbreathable shots and moments repeated until it manages the impression of emptiness that the own character has. Of course the intrigue catches you and the drama is lived in first person, but some narrative choices and a crazy ending leaves the spectator the doubt of the character going to pick up some mushrooms or buying an expensive watch.
Variety
It hits with direct emotional force (...) Popescu has a knack for staggering multiple lines of tension and conversation in a scene.
The Playlist
Brutally effective, profoundly depressing (...) Like a magician uses misdirection, Popescu uses repetition and banality to lull us away from the scene?s crux.
Screen Daily
The direction on this, his third feature, is assured (...) The acting is first-rate (...) This is a quality production.
Fotogramas
La Razón
El País
The identity signs of the Romanian new wave are here at the service of a nightmare of a family disintegration, fueled by the difficult disappearance that turns the father in some sort of private investigator blinded by obsession. 'Pororoca' echoes the fragile nature of a subjectivity when an absence starts infecting everything.