User Reviews

Cristina, an ethnic-Hungarian actress of average talent living in România, is followed every day when she leaves the theatre where she's rehearsing Chekhov's 'Three Sisters'. But it isn't some smelly, wild-eyed obsessive following her: luckily it's the charming, hunky young Rafael, a poverty-stricken boxer fifteen years Cristina's junior, who has fallen for her. At first Cristina tells him to get lost, but gradually becomes intrigued and agrees to go for coffee.

The message is slightly dodgy: pester a woman long enough and eventually she'll give in. And I could have done with fewer or shorter scenes both of Cristina's rehearsals and of Rafael's training (but a few shots of him in the shower wouldn't have gone amiss!) In many respects the film is predictable (you will not be surprised by what Rafael's new boss asks him to do just prior to a fight). But the two leads (Hilda Peter and Rafael Florea) are engaging, the "will-they-won't-they?" aspect doesn't feel too forced and director Florin Şerban ends the film at just the right point. I'd watch it again.

Box is clearly not a film about boxing despite a number of really well-crafted scenes in the ring and the gym. The kind of scenes where you can smell the sweat and the anger and, sometimes, the fear of getting beaten up. But, that aside, it could have been named 'Theater' just as well because the other focus of the movie is this artsy milieu with its dusty stages and intellectual pretentiousness.

So, he's a 19 year old boxer with good looks and low prospects, she's a small-town actress in her mid-30 with an annoyingly histrionic husband who probably cheats on her. He's got nothing to lose, she's lost the will to pretend, and they allow themselves to get caught in each other's gravity, so to speak. This is what this movie is really about and everything else is just background. While it may seem less than enough to justify yet another "love comes where you least expect it" story, the writer/director achieves such level of intensity in showing the chemistry between the two, with such economy of words, that the movie fully holds its own. The two leads are excellent, especially Hilda Peter whose amazing screen presence is crucial to creating the magic.