Dragoste 1: Caine, the title in English for this movie is “Love 1: Dog”, here is my review.
“Love 1: Dog” might seem like a very strange title but it makes sense in the end if you pay close attention and you understand what the movie is about.
The movie is full of hidden messages, the dialogues are mostly obscure and with a hidden meaning, rather than saying straight what they mean.
We have only 4 or 5 characters in the entire movie, very few lines of dialogue.
However, the lines as thin as they are, display many human emotions.
There isn’t much of a story. We see the daily life of a hermit that is living alone in his cabin, in the mountains of Transilvania, Romania.
Our hermit finds a young injured girl which he brings in his cabin to rescue and understand what happened to her.
What comes next, you can figure out from the movie trailer, it is pretty explicit.
However, the main point of the movie is much more interesting and you will probably never guess it from the trailer.
The acting is top notch. We have proven actors from past movies, the main character, the hermit, and the girl which also played in another great Romanian movie, “Dupa Dealuri” (“Beyond Hills”) which I also strongly recommend.
The movie is a slow burner, pretty much all the scenes are moving slow, there are many times when the dialogue lines are delayed because the characters seem to overthink what they are about to say.
And the fact that most of the scenes are played in total darkness, only having a natural fire bringing some light, is also contributing to this chill, relaxing atmosphere that the movie is trying to portray.
The nature showed in the movie is absolutely fantastic. The Romanian mountains are very beautiful and they feel completely out of this world.
Overall, this is a great movie, pretty different from what we are used to, compared with the usual Romanian movie themes which are mostly related to the communist era or the Romanian lifestyle which implies corruption and poverty.
This movie is great to see even for people that are not from Romania, I’ve noticed that it has English subtitles.
Florin Serban, the director of this movie has also completed at this time another movie called “Love 2: America” which seems like it will be in a different setting compared to this one, but both movies will share the same ideas, about love.
Thumbs up for this movie, if you want to watch something that will take you away from this world for about 2 hours, check it out.
One last thing, if you rewatch it, you will make some crazy theories in your head. This movie is much more complex.
Dragoste 1: Caine is a great movie, I hope that this review gave you some ideas.