Young Critics: 'The Fixer' door Cláudio Alves
From a group of young boys either diving, swimming or lankily getting out of a Romanian Olympic swimming pool, our eyes are guided towards a window from where their adult guardians are watching the events. The slowly decreasing distance between the camera and its subject invites the gaze of the viewer to wander and decide whom of these observers to observe. The symmetrical composition, the architectural lines and the presence of a standing male body at the very center of it invite us to choose a specific human point of focus, but an almost imperceptible move to the right reveals the actual protagonist of the story that will unfold over the next 93 minutes. This elegant misdirection of the audience’s gaze is how The Fixer (Adrian Sitaru, 2016) starts. Unfortunately, this also represents a moment of cinematographic sensitivity that is missing elsewhere.
