You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Set in post-Ceausescu Romania, this picturesque winter's tale is incredibly beautiful to watch, as the stylistically choreographed scenes shaded in deep greys, blues, and whites look as if they were taken from a Bruegel painting. Based on a true life story, this spectacular, heart-breaking drama is about an intense love triangle involving two young women who grew up in an orphanage and how their traumatic past has guided their intense bond to end in a tragically misjudged demonic exorcism. A tragedy unfolds where the road to hell is literally full of good intentions.
The story centres on Alina, a young woman who seeks to reunite with her childhood sweetheart Voichita after her return from Germany. Having been forced to leave the orphanage at the age of eighteen, Voichita meanwhile has found refuge in an isolated monastery up in the hills of Moldova, where she finds solace with God and friendship with Papa, the head of the monastery. The girls' bond, arising in deprivation, is intense, and erotic, coming with all the pitfalls and unpredictability of disorganised attachment, dissociation, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Alina is clingy and desperate to win Voichita's love back: “If I let God into my heart, will you start loving me again?” she asks the emotionally numb Voichita. Her persuasive attempts fail to compete with Voichita's dedication to Papa and her devotion to God holds a greater force. Feeling betrayed and rejected, Alina's dissociated angry parts take over and she unpredictably lashes out at members of the monastery and goes into a meltdown state that appears to be psychotic. Her incomprehensible outrage leads Papa and the hysterical religious sisters to believe that Alina is possessed by the devil and therefore decide to forcefully tie her to a cross and save her soul by performing an exorcism.
The brutality with which the ritual is done and its catastrophic ending reminded me of two articles I recently came across where descriptions are not dis