Dealing with the problems of people with no real problems in an Eastern European context is a rare endeavour, and for that alone, up-and-coming director Cecilia Ștefănescu deserves a pat on the back. Her bold effort in this regard, A Safe Place, currently locking horns in the First Feature Competition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, is a moral drama about marital boredom and the existential malaise of the middle class. Yet, the conflict feels too domestic and the aesthetics overly mundane for a supposed contemplation of intimate alienation, while the ending – in which the man violently demonstrates who’s the boss here – knocks out any lingering ambition for philosophical reflection. It’s as if the Balkan setting turns out to be an inadequate stage for an in-depth debate on the waning of desires in an overly comfortable, sheltered environment devoid of challenges.

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Two couples with kids are spending their summer holidays together in a remote house by the seaside – this is not the Riviera, but somewhere in the wilderness of the northern Bulgarian Black Sea coast, yet it’s still an environment where nothing should disrupt their happiness. But Luciana (Marina Palii) is somewhat melancholic and doesn’t respond to her husband’s (Virgil Aioanei) hand briskly slipping into her beach bikini – an invitation to quickly have sex while the children splash around in the sea – nor does she show much enthusiasm during the evening giggles and hollow talks, while her friend Cristina (Bianca Cuculici) makes out with her husband (Rolando Matsangos). The strata begin to shift when a seemingly random guy called Vladimir (Emil Măndănac) appears out of nowhere as the complete opposite of Luciana’s husband – in fact, she secretly shares a distant, unrealised past with Vladimir, which then starts to come to light. Her sadness seems to become more profound when the boredom born of a lack of longing turns into jealousy and anxiety over the impossibility of attaining this desire that has finally emerged.

“What the hell is Luciana’s problem?” is the question that not only preoccupies her frustrated husband, but also weaves its way throughout the entire film, clumsily enveloping her in fake mystery. Is she just a lonely housewife, stifled by a dominant husband who prefers her to be vulnerable and helpless in a place too safe to spark any vibrant life, or is she simply disgusted by his primitive displays of desire, his meaningless nationalist ramblings at the dinner table, or his overall possessive behaviour – all actions that kill off love? Or maybe her soul is swollen with excessive sentimentality and she is suffering from a lack of romantic excitement, or overestimating sex and love, as Vladimir suggests? Whatever the answer, her aimless wandering and empty sighs – expressed through Marina Palii’s misty gaze and pouty face – fail to elicit much empathy, a sentiment likely shared by the director herself, since the final, aggressive scene comes across almost as a deserved punishment for a spoiled little girl who needs a beating to get her back on track. DoP Luchian Ciobanu’s camera gazes at the heroine insistently and searchingly, as if trying to uncover a depth ambitiously instilled in an ultimately shallow character – one that neither the dialogue nor the dramatic situations nor the acting manages to bring to the surface.

A Safe Place was produced by Romania’s Point Film in co-production with Avantpost Media.