‘One Floor Below’ Review: Suspense on Simmer

'One Floor Below'

Movie Rating:

3.5

There’s something almost hypnotically gripping about Romanian director Radu Muntean’s deliberately mundane suspense thriller ‘One Floor Below’. Take almost any scene out of the movie to view in isolation and it would appear to be an observational depiction of boring lives. But collectively and with the few scenes that transform it into a thriller, those quiet scenes seemingly about nothing are filled with a queasy sense of dread.

This is certainly not a movie for everyone, and an understanding of the Romanian political climate that serves as an unspoken backdrop is pretty much essential, but for those able to meet the filmmaker on his very specific wavelength, the film holds remarkable power.

Teodor Corban and his perpetually hangdog face star in this story. Corban plays a middle-aged father named Sandu with a curious profession, and for whom dog-walking qualifies as the high point of a day. One afternoon after returning home with his dog, Sandu overhears a lovers quarrel from an apartment in his building. He lingers for a second only to have the shouting boyfriend (Iulian Postelnicu) emerge suddenly and glare at the old man to make it clear he’s not welcome. The shouter lives in another apartment with his wife, so Sandu has caught a glimpse of an affair. He decides it’s best to keep that to himself, even when the young girl is murdered and the police arrive at his apartment to ask if he has any information. We soon learn that Sandu’s job is essentially to help citizens get documentation for their cars with ease by going around the conventional bureaucracy. He’s so accustomed to distrusting the government that he’d rather conceal the information he knows about a murder than speak honestly with a police officer. That’s a tricky conundrum to live within and it only gets worse when the presumed killer shows up at the man’s apartment to quietly help with his son’s computer problems and ingratiate himself into the family.

Muntean shoots his film in long static takes that coldly observe the lives of his characters. There’s no manipulative Hitchcock film grammar in play to heighten the experience. Instead, the filmmaker allows the quiet behavior and conversations circling around secrets to create a suspense of their own. Once the setup is established, it’s clear that things will go wrong and Mutean lets his audience sit with that impending dread until the closing minutes. That might sound dull, but the effect is oddly compelling once viewers settle into the unique rhythms of the piece. Suddenly, mundane conversations about videogames and gentle gossip become intense because of the larger story being willfully ignored by the protagonist, which both he and the audience know will eventually come back biting.

The performances are impressively naturalistic throughout. Muntean has a knack for recreating a meandering sense of life within his chilly observant frames that his actors truly respond to. However, two performances clearly stand out. One is Iulian Postelnicu, who cuts an imposing presence in his first screen appearance and then becomes quietly threatening and frightening from that point on. He plays things subtly enough that it’s believable no one would consider him a menace, yet for viewers he remains a disconcerting figure. Even better is Corban as a man so defeated by the world that he can barely bother to participate. Though the character never discusses his true feelings, Corban’s face makes all of his guilt and devastation clear. Through tiny glances and grimaces, Corban creates a tragic character and the subtle dance he shares with Postelnicu is impressive to behold until it finally boils over.

Although the movie functions best as a thriller that simmers rather than boils, it has an unstated social commentary underlying the piece that must be acknowledged. Corban’s character grew up in an intense Communist regime that wore him down and caused his irrational distrust of authorities. (Even his job is left over from an era of dodging bureaucracy to get anything done). He represents a defeated and paranoid generation, which explains his peculiar behavior after observing a murder without ever justifying it. That subtext is clear without being overbearing and adds to the potency of the piece. At the same time, it’s not necessary to appreciate the subtle twist on ‘Rear Window’ that Muntean has created. It just adds an additional level to a movie far more complicated than its gentle rhythms might suggest on a scene-by-scene basis.

About as far from a Hollywood thriller as possible while still dipping its toes into the genre, ‘One Floor Below’ is a unique film worth seeking out and savoring for those tired of the bright, expensive and bombastic style of American filmmaking.

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