Review of Tales from the Golden Age (2009) by Elise M — 01 Feb 2011

Started with a good enough idea : taking urban legends from socialist Romania and making short films to illustrate them. Not as compelling as The lives of Others or as funny as Goodbye Lenin, a little disappointing.

The tale of the air steelers or the tale of the Official visit are all right, but you get the feeling of flipping through somebody else's photo album and memories and not ever really getting pulled in. Congrats to set directors and art directors though for recreating realistically the feeling of the era, but in the same style I recommend the Phantom of Belgrade. A pseudo documentary about this guy that drove a stolen Porsche through the streets of Belgrade,Yougoslavia, becoming a symbol of freedom in that repressive state and drew crowds of up to 10 000 people at night to see him ridicule the local police in 1979.