“The two films made by Stere Gulea, more than three decades apart, are almost unique in Romanian cinematography. It was extremely rare for a director who made films before 1989 to return to the universe of one of them after the Revolution.”

“With the exception of some moments of family intimacy and father-son relationship, when the direction allows the accumulation of emotions, the film is Manicheist in its representation of the village and society. And its structure involves a hurried accumulation of events, a tumbling of happenings, which leaves no time for the characters and several narrative sequences and tracks to develop and gain relief.”

“In a Romanian cinematography dominated by long sequence shots, with the camera kept at a certain distance from the characters, “Moromete Family: On the Edge of Time” proposes a counterweight – a classic style with changes of camera position within the same sequence, numerous close-ups, all rendered through a rich cut, which also allows for an abundance of information.”

“(…) The conflict between the communist son and the skeptic father was going on (in the first movie) – Preda had given convincing force to both positions. In Gulea’s 2 it doesn’t hold: the director-screenwriter neutralizes it as soon as he primes it.”

“The labors of the fields are the same, the voices of the village can still be heard in the background, but time has no patience with Preda and Gulea’s characters. The filmmaker is interested both in the disappearance of the latter peasant (as the literary critic Nicolae Manolescu called Ilie Moromete) and in the formative period of Niculae, an obvious alter ego of the writer. In the movie, Niculae the creator takes the place of Niculae the activist in the book, but the change of emphasis does not overshadow the profound transformation of Romanian society. Without being a literary adaptation, but neither too free, Gulea’s movie succeeds in an exemplary way in recreating the spirit of Preda’s world, at the intersection of reality and fiction.”

“Gulea’s repeated interest in the socialist period, present in his post-revolution films gives “Moromete Family: On the Edge of Time” a dignity that other communist exploitation productions released in recent years do not enjoy. In the absence of a nuanced development of the political dimension, Gulea’s film devotes itself (not without skill) to the intimate dimension of the story: Niculae’s break from his family, his step into the new world in which he is to become an established writer, and his attempts to make sense of the changes that surround him.”

“Both “The Moromete Family” and the trilogy’s sequel, “Moromete Family: On the Edge of Time” (2024), are a vanity project. The approach is a middle-brow one, i.e. ‘serious’ enough not to be confused with overtly commercial productions, but not ambitious enough to impose itself.”