Razvan Vasilescu, Cecilia Barbora, Victor Rebengiuc, Dorel Visan, Ion Fiscuteanu, Florin Calinescu

Synopsis:

Germany 1996. A man rummages through a bag, finding some sticks of dynamite. A few months earlier, in the Jiu Valley , a remote province in Romania , prosecutor Costa arrives to investigate some deaths that took place in a coal mine. Costa soon meets Alina. The two become lovers, but the mysterious mining deaths continue. Costa discovers something that took place before his arrival. Ficht and Ferz are twins, both afflicted by mental illness. Ficht goes in and out of hospital, while Ferz, like the prototype in an inverse evolution, has transformed into a kind of animal, following a regression from man to beast, and has found his habitat in the mine.

“TOO LATE ends my trilogy on communism and its devastation in Romania .

THE REENACTMENT (1968), ultimate romantic hope…

THE OAK (1992) view of a paraplegic communism…

and finally TOO LATE (1996) my most serious film, perhaps, on the transfiguration of communism.

Too Late is the ultimate level of cheated hope, when the entire Communist Party has turned into a class of nouveau riches, when gangsters have replaced the all-powerful Party, when no resistance is possible any longer, when there is nothing left but exile (and where to?), when everything comes too late…

… Too Late is a concept that provokes divine anger. It is like challenging Eternity, the very Being of God, exposing a possible absence of meaning.” (Lucian Pintilie)

“We can be sure that in the face of this sound chronicle by Lucian Pintilie, there will be some who will complain, ‘It's too explicit...' [...] It is puzzling as to why most critics are deaf today to the cries of pain coming from behind the wall/former wall.” (Lorenzo Cordelli, in Positif, no. 425-426, July - August 1996, pg 132)

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