Eva (2010)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Great Film overall

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Blistering performances.

The movie screenplay is written based on the Radu Tudoran book The prodigal son (fiul risipitor - in Romanian). The book is a beautiful love story. The love of Eva for Tudor, an unriliable guy, who comes and lives as he likes. Eva is a strong woman who can't control her unhealthy love, he is her weakness, her impossible love, her dream and her nightmare. She takes him back every time and in the end of the book she is loosing her mind when he dies in the bombing incident and she looks for him everywhere keep on saying at every corner "maybe he is here". The movie has such a hollywodian approach, "he is a spy and that way he disappear / reappear with no explanation, everybody goes to America and presumably live happy ever after. No. The guy is just a pric and she can't control her addiction. Although I consider is difficult to translate into a movie a book like this, the ending chose for the movie only made it worst. The book is beautiful, I read it twice, once when I was in my 20s and the second time in my 30s, and I would like to read it again because I discovered different things at different age. Unfortunately the book was not translated in English.

There are certain trash movies that have achieved cult status,even Adrian Popovici who directs this movie made one : Dracula the Impaler (2002).Unintentional fun just like : William Girdler's "The Manitou"(1978) or : Chiodo's "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" (1988)but in this case the film lacks any of this qualities,no self-spoof or any sign of visual aesthetic instead it has wooden acting,2d characters and ridiculous subplots.Could have been a "contre-emploi" comeback on the big screen for Jean Claude Van Damme ,even "Legionnaire" has a more convincing romantic approach or Steven Seagal's last "Born to raise hell".Bergin and Ironside are totally miscast ,it's also a shame that excellent romanian actors like Morgenstern or Bleont are part of this farce,i guess they got the script before signing the contract.... I felt like dreaming when i saw it,who could finance the movie knowing what disasters Adrian Popovici has directed and produced in the past,he should stick to DTV zombie flicks .I've read comments earlier about Ujica's "Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceausescu" (2010)an excellent documentary,impartial and with artistical integrity,go and watch it instead of spending money and time on "Eva".

Eva is a movie that is very different from other Romanian films. Yes, it has some flaws but the image is beautiful, the music is also beautiful and I'm happy that it has music because most of the Romanian movies don't have music and most of them have an ugly image in which you can see the poverty in our country. I respect this movie because it's different. The actors have done a great job. Congrats to Amy Hayes because,even if she wasn't in a movie before, she managed to be great in this cause this was a hard role. Emily Hamilton, who portrays Eva's sister who was obsessed with the idea that she wants to get married so she can leave the house, was so great in the moments of despair after her father died. And of course, Michael Ironside who was absolutely brilliant in the role of the fierce uncle! I recommend you should see this movie. Maybe you will like it, maybe you won't. But you should so you can see that not everybody does movies about Ceausescu and poverty and minimalistic films in general.

This movie is going into my ever growing list of completely worthless, mentally frustrating movies to watch. No offences to the main actors, as I believe a failed drama is often the fault of the director/producers/writers -- those people whose faces you may never see. The story was severely disjointed, and the acting was nauseating at times and laughable at others. I had so many moments of, Huh? Say what? and You've got to be kidding me, while watching this. Not worth the couple of hours I will never get back. If only I would learn to make this judgement at the beginning and not convince myself to sit through the whole thing, hoping desperately that the miserable story and acting at some obscure and never attainable point will be redeemed.