Review of The Happiest Girl in the World

I saw this Romanian film at Berlinale and was amazed at how much it achieves with a simple plot and a very limited budget. The film follows Delia, a teenage girl who, after winning a brand new car in some kind of sweepstakes held by a fruit juice brand, has to film a fruit juice commercial in which she has to introduce herself as the winner - the happiest girl in the world, and drink a bottle of advertised juice. That's it as much as the plot is concerned basically, and though it sounds trivial, it is at times hilarious and at times very dramatic. The director based the film after his own experience when shooting a similar commercial with a somewhat difficult girl. He uses long static takes that seemed like a bit of a gimmick at first, but after seeing the excellent actors go at each other in the more dramatic scenes, I completely forgot about it and it made perfect sense to let them do it all in one take.

So long story short, it's a great simple film that really engaged me at the dramatic parts while still making me laugh out loud a lot. See it if you get a chance!