‘Love sick’ runs in cinema halls, and ‘4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days,’ winner of the Palme d’Or 2007, will run in French gymnasiums and high schools.

The French National Education Minister Xavier Darcos decided on Wednesday that the film directed by Cristian Mungiu, ‘4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days,’ winner of the Palme d’Or 2007, can be run in the gymnasiums and high schools from France.
 
Thus, the French Minister complied with the recommendation formulated by the Commission on film classification, which decided on Tuesday evening to include the pedagogical DVD with the Romanian film in the category “for all the types of public,” but with a warning.
 
The film signed by Cristian Mungiu adjudicated the Palme d’Or at the 2007 edition of the International Film Festival from Cannes and the National Education Award.
The Ministry of Education decided that the DVD, edited in 1,500 copies, will be “accompanied by a pedagogical document that will contain the warning of the commission and will help the teachers in their activity connected with this work.”
 
On July 6, Xavier Darcos had announced that he refused to edit the DVD with Mungiu’s film for schools because it is too tough. The next day the minister “suspended” his decision, after the Society of the Film Directors (SRF) denounced “the pressure of some anti-abortion associations” to not distribute on DVD in the educational units the film of Cristian Mungiu about the clandestine abortions from Ceausescu’s Romania. The Ministry decided also to receive the SRF representatives and the members of the jury of the National Education Award and consult the National Commission on classification.
 
Two scenes were at the heart of the polemics – one of them about an aborted fetus, and another one in which a young woman accepts to have sex in order to pay for the abortion of her friend, although, according to ‘Le Figaro,’ the film was awarded precisely for its “artistic and pedagogical qualities.”
 
‘Love sick’ on the french big screens
 
Also starting yesterday, the Romanian film “Love sick” by Tudor Giurgiu appeared on the big screens from France, after running in cinema halls from Taiwan, Poland and Spain. In the next six months, this movie will be distributed also in Great Britain and Bulgaria. “Love sick” – the biggest Romanian box-office success of the year 2006, has participated to over 40 festivals, the most recent of them being in Cleveland, Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Belgrade, London.
The feature “Love sick,” launched last year, in February, in the section Panorama of the Film Festival from Berlin, had the Romanian first on April 7, 2006.
 
The novel “Love sick” appeared in 2002 at Paralela 45 publishing house, and was republished in the spring 2005 at “Polirom” in the series “Ego. Proza.” Recently, the novel was edited also in French, under the title “Liaisons morbides” (Phebus Publishing House, France), under the programme “Les Belles Etrangeres.”

by Alex Elias