Adaptation Advance Access published July 3, 2014

Adaptation
doi:10.1093/adaptation/apu016

‘Don’t You Dare to Vote With the Communists!’:

Timeliness, Nostalgia and the Authenticity of
Experience in I’m a Communist Biddy!
JozEfiNA KomporAlY*

Abstract This article investigates the parallel adaptation processes between genres and media

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of Dan lungu’s celebrated romanian novel I’m a Communist Biddy! (2007). Drawing on Stere
Gulea’s ilm adaptation (Sunt a babă comunistă!, mediapro pictures, romania, 2013) and Tamara
Török and Judit Csoma’s stage version (Egy komcsi nyanya vagyok!, Katona József Theatre,
Budapest, 2013), the article observes that neither ilm nor play are governed by an agenda of
idelity to the source text, and they depart from the literary source because of a new historical and
economic context, in which the preoccupation with the communist era remains a timely endeav-
our all the same. Both versions strive for authenticity in terms of location and time period, and to
this end they opt for an elaborate recreation of the past in the ilm and a reduction to literal levels
of austerity onstage. Thus, both cinematic and stage adaptation operate as explorations into the
protagonist’s past, and in this sense they are illuminating works of art about personal memory,
embedded to a certain extent, within collective memory. The adaptations strive to accurately
represent selected notions of history, in parallel with which they also create alternative temporali-
ties that mythologize history and favour a nonlinear sense of time. for this reason, i read these
adaptations—ranging from transposition to commentary—as a form of translation, that explores
the relationship between women and history and intertwines a cluster of inluences, from histori-
cal plays and ilms, memory and verbatim plays, as well as staged biographies and enactments
‘on location’.

Keywords Romanian cinema, Hungarian theatre, Stere Gulea, Dan Lungu, Sunt o babă
comunistă!, i’m a Communist Biddy!, authenticity.

Dan Lungu’s 2007 novel Sunt o babă comunistă! [I’m a Communist Biddy!] was one of the
publishing sensations in recent Romanian iction and has been translated to date into
almost a dozen languages. Its French and Polish translations have been exceptionally
well-received, being awarded major literary prizes and, in this way, acculturated to a
degree into those particular cultural contexts. This paper seeks to investigate the afterlife
of the novel through adaptation between genres and media, considering the adaptation
processes for screen and stage, respectively, and it draws on Stere Gulea’s ilm adapta-
tion (Sunt a babă comunistă!, MediaPro Pictures, Romania, 2013) and Tamara Török and
Judit Csoma’s stage version (Egy komcsi nyanya vagyok!, Katona József Theatre, Budapest,
2013), the latter based on the Hungarian translation of the novel by Gabriella Koszta.
The paper contends that these adaptations are timely because Romanian—and indeed

*Department of Drama, De Montfort University. E-mail: jkomporaly@dmu.ac.uk

© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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PAGE 2 OF 11 JozEfiNA KomporAlY

other East European—cultures continue to be preoccupied with versions of history, in

particular regarding the communist era. Both ilm and play explore a sense of nostalgia
for the bygone political regime, and the paper argues that these adaptations recon-
ceive the past and historicize the present, and succeed precisely because they turn their
attention to investigating the very essence of this nostalgia. The adaptations strive for
authenticity in terms of place and time, and to this end they opt for an elaborate recrea-
tion of the past in the ilm and a reduction to literal levels of austerity onstage. In this
sense, both ilm and stage play are essentially explorations into the protagonist’s past,
and they illuminate—with their particular means—the operation of personal memory,
embedded to a lesser or greater extent, within collective memory. Neither ilm nor play
are governed by an agenda of excessive idelity to the source text though—in fact they
depart from the literary source because of a new historical and economic context—and

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are not preoccupied with the hierarchy between opposing political regimes either. For
this reason, I read these adaptations as a form of translation, implying a ‘principled
efort of intersemiotic transposition, with the inevitable losses and gains typical of any
translation’ (Stam 62).
Thus, following on from Stam, these adaptations can be classed a form of translation
not so much because idelity is an ‘inadequate’ but an irrelevant trope when it comes to
plot details and structure. On the whole, there is ‘a idelity to the spirit’ and ‘values’ of
the source text in both adaptations (cf. Dudley Andrew 29–32), but they fuse together
a complex range of inluences not to be found in the source text (historical plays and
ilms, memory and verbatim plays, as well as staged biographies and enactments ‘on
location’), through which they ofer additional explorations on the relationship between
women and history. Having said this, both ilm and play integrate an ‘appropriation of
meaning from a prior text’ (Andrew 29) and also assume awareness of these adapta-
tions ‘as adaptation’, which involves, in Linda Hutcheon’s words, ‘a conceptual lipping
back and forth between the work we know and the work we are experiencing’ (139).
Following Thomas Leitch (108–11), both ilm and stage play rely on ilmgoers’—and
here, by extension, theatregoers’—willingness to play the intertextual game of recog-
nizing textual markers that identify adaptations as such. Thus, there is a strong pre-
occupation with providing period setting and costume (crummy lats in semiderelict
apartment blocks, and lots of ill-itting and unfashionable clothes), which is further
ampliied by another generic marker: period music in the shape of 1980s and 1990s
Romanian pop music.
Both adaptations retain the basic premise of Lungu’s novel: how is it possible that
so many ordinary people, who were forced to live under a totalitarian regime without
enjoying any privileges, can now manifest such nostalgia? The novel and its adaptations
dismantle the mechanisms of this reminiscence and attempt to shed light on this psycho-
logical riddle. Emilia, the communist biddy of the title, is a sixty-something pensioner
living in a small town in a modest neighbourhood in southern Romania, and she is the
protagonist-narrator remembering her past.1 As Emilia clashes with her daughter over
political allegiances, she develops a genuine crisis of identity, which she tries to sidestep
by harking back to the past and seeking to justify her nostalgia. This triggers a symbolic
return to her youth during the communist dictatorship, together with the punctuation
of daily life during that period. Although neither Gulea’s ilm nor Török and Csoma’s
 Timeliness, Nostalgia and the Authenticity of Experience PAGE 3 OF 11

stage play have a declared target audience, they have both primarily reached out to a
demographic with an immediate experience of communism, which category in fact
fuels a continued interest in the rewriting and reassessment of this historical period in
various creative genres and media. Consequently, the ilm and play adaptations do not
need to insist on an in-depth familiarity with the novel, as this knowledge is substituted
by the spectators’ personal historical experience. In this sense, although they both have
been billed as adaptations, it is likely that they would have obtained commercial success
even as independent artistic interventions, without capitalizing on the novel’s reputa-
tion as a bestseller.
A motive for this continued interest in the past is that many Romanians have not yet
come to terms with the implications of communism on their lives. This is ampliied by
the fact that the economical and political climate has changed signiicantly since 2007,

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both globally due to the economic recession and locally as a result of change of govern-
ment, followed by a rise in nationalist discourse. In this context, more and more people
have turned towards idealizing the bygone era of communism, especially the postre-
tirement population who ind themselves marginalized by society. This category does
not have a voice in the public arena any longer and, as a result, is nostalgic about the
past when they were inancially active and had a sense of purpose in life. Responding
to this climate, the adaptations strive to accurately represent selected notions of history,
in parallel with which, however, they also create alternative temporalities that mytholo-
gize history and favour an appropriate cyclical sense of time. Thus, we are faced with
instances where the adaptative process is underpinned by Stam’s principle of adapta-
tion as translation, entirely comfortable with the inevitable losses and gains required
by the intersemiotic transfer. Some of these translations are literal and others igura-
tive and are often tied in with material processes, within which these temporalities are
deployed. For instance, to capture the above sense of hardship and marginalization, the
ilm is relocated to a later moment in historical time than the novel (to 2009), to coin-
cide with the height of the recession and to have a clearer rationale for the fact that the
protagonist’s daughter emigrated to Canada. Thus, ilm and stage play reinforce Pierre
Nora’s claim that ‘there is no such thing as spontaneous memory’ (Nora 4).
The stage version is a ‘transposition’ of a kind of the novel, while Stere Gulea’s
adaptive strategy is one of ‘commentary – where the original is […] altered due to
the intentions of the ilm-maker’ and the adaptation ‘comments on the politics of the
source text […] by means of alteration or addition’ (Wagner 222, Cartmell in Cartmell
and Whelehan, 1999, 24). Many of the adaptive decisions clarify aspects of the novel
left relatively open for interpretation, and the screenplay traces a much closer connec-
tion between cause and efect than the novel, as there is an overt preoccupation on
behalf of the director not to lose the viewer by too many digressions or unresolved
matter. The screenplay written by Lucian Dan Teodorovici, Vera Ion, and the director
himself is entirely in the service of the target audience, and Gulea’s main concern was
to cut down on the novel’s frequent lashbacks, as he does not favour this particular cin-
ematic technique and felt that such a regular fragmentation would transport the viewer
away from the ilm’s narrative arc. In this way, he transforms a source text governed
by allusions and associations to a cinematic adaptation that makes connections explicit
rather than implicit. On the whole, the ilm’s agenda is to clarify a particular version
PAGE 4 OF 11 JozEfiNA KomporAlY

and vision of history and, to this end, it steers clear of ambiguity. Adapting iction (and
indeed real-life events) for the screen has been a major direction in Gulea’s career, and
writing or collaborating on screenplays constitutes the irst step in his claiming the
material as his own.2 He in fact contends that this marks the beginning of the passage
towards full authorial responsibility (Gulea interviewed by Komporaly).
Conversely, the stage adaptation is almost entirely constituted by lashbacks.
Performed by a single actress (Judit Csoma) in an intimate studio space, the play follows
the format of a staged biography and authentically renders the situation of a woman
alone, conined to a tiny lat that constitutes her universe, reminiscing about her past.
Her present (roughly in the mid-1990s) is solely dedicated to the process of remember-
ing, whereas in the ilm version the present also includes events that may not have an
immediate connection to the past. The novel is transcoded to the stage through a series

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of extended monologues that cover a large time span from the protagonist’s life—some
memories stretch back to early childhood—and replicate the novel’s cyclical sense of
time. Emilia’s process of remembrance is ignited by a phone call from her twenty-
something daughter, Alice, through which Emilia’s past political allegiance and present
indecision is put under scrutiny. As she weaves one lashback onto another, the protago-
nist maps out her entire life in memory snippets and opposes the relative prosperity of
the past with the hardships of the present. Emilia’s present condition is extremely mod-
est as she and her husband (who never appears onstage) make ends meet on a meagre
pension, and the stage adaptation emphasizes literally the austerity of their condition.
Aiming for authenticity in the extreme, the set design for the production recreates a
crammed living room with a couple of armchairs, a table and chairs, an old portable
radio, and the key prop—a hideous black bakelite disk-dial telephone—that constitutes
the sole channel of communication with the outside world. This set is laid out on what
would have been the standard uniform of housewives all over the Soviet Bloc between
the 1960s and the 1990s, a gigantic housecoat in the Romanian national colours (red,
yellow, and blue) that covers the stage loor and provides the background scenery. Thus,
set and costume fuse to reinforce the protagonist’s suspension in a somewhat mytholo-
gized past, conjured up visually by the presence of the national colours, as well as
to propagate a message of domesticity. Costuming ampliies this message further, as
Emilia is also wearing a dressing gown made out of the warmest lannel—a reference
to the chronic lack of heating in communist Romania.
The ilm also locates Emilia in a clearly deined physical setting, but this contextual-
izes a much broader and layered environment. The camera focuses at leisure on the
neighbourhood where the family lives, zooming in on shabby, almost derelict blocks of
lats. Most of these being built in the seventies, they have gone into disrepair and are
surrounded by litter. Going from full-scale state ownership to the overnight emergence
of private property, in Romania there continues to be relatively little sense of respon-
sibility towards communal matters, and Gulea captures this sense of neglect, doubling
the dilapidation of the buildings with a sense of abandonment experienced by the older
generation idling their way through the day and playing backgammon. The shabbiness
of the present is counterbalanced with a sense of grandeur regarding the distant past,
as it is often customary in Eastern Europe. Alice’s American iancée is given a historical
tour of the town which takes in key references to what is perceived to be the glorious
 Timeliness, Nostalgia and the Authenticity of Experience PAGE 5 OF 11

past, such as the equestrian statue of seventeenth-century ruler Michael the Brave
(Mihai Viteazul), which prompts Emilia’s husband, Tucu, to address his role in nation-
building and resisting foreign invasion. When meeting their daughter’s American ian-
cée, the couple opt for their most formal clothes, considering these the only suitable
attire for such a major occasion. Their ill-itting and out-dated clothes are in sharp
contrast with the casual look of the young American who appears in trainers, jeans, and
a short-sleeved shirt. This is of course a relatively facile shorthand for the clash between
generations, cultural backgrounds, and world views, but it is also highly plausible in the
circumstances in Romania and, in this sense, a clear marker of authenticity.
The stage adaptation focuses on Emilia’s gradual process of self-relection as she
has to make up her mind about which party to support in the forthcoming elections
and hence re-evaluate her own political commitment, while the ilm juxtaposes con-

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tradictory points of view and Emilia is more or less forced to take a quick stance. As
opposed to Alice’s strong anticommunist views, Emilia does come across as a supporter
of the defunct regime and a sympathizer with neo-communists; however, in my view,
for Emilia the present is relatively nonexistent: she continues to live in the past as she is
unable to understand the here and the now. In this way, Emilia resists a linear notion of
history and institutes an alternative temporality with mythical accents, in which the past
is superimposed upon the present. Emilia deploys a panoply of lieux de mémoire, to use
Pierre Nora’s celebrated concept, rummaging through an assortment of events, places,
and experiences that have made communism communism for her. Nora argues for the
pertinence of these memory aids for interpreting [French] history, claiming that a lieu is
‘any signiicant entity […] that by dint of human will or the work of time has become
a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community’ (Nora xvii). My con-
tention is that Emilia’s consciousness operates almost exclusively through the medium
of lieux de mémoire, although there is a high risk of her actually misunderstanding rather
than comprehending history in this way.
Director Stere Gulea’s declared view is that his ilm’s protagonist was unable to igure
out not only the present but also the past: she became complicit with a hideous regime
without being aware of the true signiicance of her tacit support (Gulea interviewed by
Komporaly). She never realized that her relatively comfortable life as a party member
was achieved at the cost of a system destroying the lives of millions, and because she
fails to come to terms with that fact, the ilm cannot even begin to address her guilt
or trauma. Instead, this screen adaptation is about her sense of loss and inability of
adjustment to change, without analysing political convictions. In this sense, this ilm is a
well-crafted psychological drama on a micro level, and a plausible exploration of con-
temporary family relationships. It is an entirely missed opportunity for a political witch
hunt, and those who expected such an outcome were truly disappointed as the contro-
versy around the ilm in the Romanian cultural press demonstrates.3 Gulea declared
repeatedly that his aim was not to judge, but rather to expose, the social problem that
the category epitomized by Emilia represents. He calls attention to the powerlessness of
an aging and undereducated community, both before and after the change of regime,
and points to a need to analyse and understand their situation. In my view, it is precisely
this compassionate tone that enraged critics of the ilm, as public opinion continues
to feel that no adequate justice has been done to the victims of communism despite
PAGE 6 OF 11 JozEfiNA KomporAlY

multiple attempts and large-scale inquiries such as the Presidential Commission for
the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, which presented its report to
the Romanian Parliament on 18 December 2006. In this sense, there is no doubt that
Gulea’s ilm fails to match the urgency of an adequate legal denunciation of commu-
nism, which indeed is yet to take place.
The eminent Romanian critic and philosopher Andrei Pleşu stated in relation to the
ilm adaptation that it shifts the debate from the arena of the ideological and political
into the domestic and the ‘generally human’, as the focus is on the individual’s destiny
beyond any particular political system. This destiny is of course inscribed into a very
particular historical and social context (both in the ilm and novel); however, Pleşu
suggests that the individual faces similar problems and manifests the same character
traits irrespective of changing political regimes. In other words, the change from one

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regime to another, even if it is as extreme as the transition from communism to aggres-
sive capitalism in Romania over the span of two decades, is unlikely to change the
individual, and, for this reason, Gulea’s ilm is an accurate observation of human traits.
Protagonist/narrator Emilia, essentially sails through life focusing on her personal life
and appears to be in perpetual denial regarding the major issues taking place in society
around her: she was just as naïve as a comfortably of communist party member as
she is in the present experiencing inancial hardships as a pensioner. Such behaviour
is on the whole plausible if we take into account her age and social background (a
relatively uneducated person, who grew up in the countryside and moved to a nearby
town during the so-called socialist industrialization in the 1970s), although this does not
make it any less disturbing. She can certainly be perceived as a convincing epitome for
the nostalgics who would happily exchange the present for the communist past, which
aspect older cinemagoers found plausible and younger ones perplexing. This opposition
becomes particularly pertinent as Gulea himself has declared his own change of heart
in the course of the creative process, which led to transformations in the director’s own
perception regarding the topic, the characters, and the ilm itself. Novelist Dan Lungu,
who is also a sociologist, contends that fantasizing about the past is caused by an inabil-
ity to ind an adequate purpose in the present. Thus, turning to the past becomes a ref-
uge; however, it is the lack of perspectives in the present that idealizes the past, instead
of the past being particularly glorious (Lungu in Costanda).
This is the case for both the screen and stage adaptation’s protagonist, and a sym-
pathetic treatment of this former communist party member can indeed be read as an
indirect absolution of a hostile regime. The protagonist, on the other hand, is not a
politician or indeed someone with clearly formulated political views; she was simply co-
opted in the communist party, as were hundreds and thousands of others, who failed to
understand the signiicance of their tacit collaboration with a criminal regime. Novelist
Lungu acknowledges his own implicit support as a student in the late 1980s, being
drafted in to participate in party parades and anniversaries. He calls attention to his
then lack of political and civic conscience that prevented him from realizing that he
was endorsing in fact a spectacle of utter deceit, while ilm director Gulea argues that
for Emilia’s generation and social condition there were no other genuine options or
aspirations (Gulea in Costanda, and Komporaly). In times of crisis, however, audiences
expect a irmer analysis of political allegiance and responsibility, and ofering even
 Timeliness, Nostalgia and the Authenticity of Experience PAGE 7 OF 11

a remotely sympathetic ilm on communism can expect to be met with controversy.

Juxtaposed to the internationally rated ilms of the Romanian New Wave, Gulea’s ilm
appears to be sitting on the fence, as it refrains from delivering an incisive critique of
either communism as an ideology or of particular individuals responsible for perpetrat-
ing it. Gulea declared at the London premiere of his ilm that he wished to steer clear of
propaganda and to relect the experience of ordinary people. In this sense, his ilm can
be regarded as genuine and successful, as on a micro scale the protagonist’s personal
human qualities do manage to distract from the disturbing fact of tacit collaboration
with a criminal regime. As someone belonging to Emilia’s generation, Gulea himself
is aware of the relative scarcity of true protesters in pre-1989 Romanian society. Just
like collaboration was tacit in Emilia’s case, so was anticommunist opposition, and for
Emilia to even sense a crisis regarding her past and start interrogating her decisions is

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signiicant.
Centred around the trope of memory, a signiicant proportion of the novel deals
with the past brought to life through various associations deployed during long inter-
nal monologues. This feature has been transposed as the key structuring device of the
stage adaptation, where the sole performer activates aspects of her past through mono-
logues, only interrupted by strategic phone conversations. For the ilm version, Gulea
decided to redress the balance between past and present, and together with cinema-
tographer Vivi Drăgan Vasile, they found an innovative solution. Instead of presenting
Emilia’s past through traditional lashbacks, they opted for focusing on the copresence
of Emilia’s selves from several ages. Present-day Emilia is shown spectating the ilm of
her own life, often shot from the back and looking back literally on her past. In this way,
the past is brought to life without the present disappearing altogether. The scenes set in
the past often include actual archival footage and hence have documentary value, but
even when we are dealing with fragments of Emilia’s personal memories, these black
and white images have an authentic ifties look, as a so-called granulation technique
was used to make the ilm appear dated. This construction of ilmic memory replicates
the way in which Emilia herself constructs the iction of her life, built around the self-
created illusion of a glorious past. Thus, the authenticity in terms of ilmic representa-
tion clashes with the self-perception of the protagonist, which contributes to the ilm’s
strong emotional charge.
Through the technique of mise-en-abyme, the ilmic adaptation successfully trans-
poses into cinematic language, even the most writerly aspects of the novel. Such
instances make full use of ilm as a ‘multitrack medium’, utilizing ‘written and spoken
word, but also […] theatrical performance, music, sound efects and moving photo-
graphic images’ (as opposed to the novel’s ‘single-track’ qualities, to quote Robert Stam
56). For example, instead of a journalist interviewing Emilia about her obsession with
the past, as in the novel, in the ilm a documentary is being made about communism. In
this way, the ilm becomes an enactment ‘on location’, past and present is superimposed,
and Emilia gets cast as an extra in her capacity as a genuine former communist. In this
sense, the makers of the ilm within the ilm strive for authenticity—they even want
her party membership card, the most tangible proof of her communist allegiance—
although they stop short of displaying further attempts at accuracy in terms of present-
ing actual events (Emilia objects repeatedly that particular aspects do not correspond to
PAGE 8 OF 11 JozEfiNA KomporAlY

her experience). The makers of the ilm within the ilm did not encounter communism
as adults, and instead of idelity to the events they are documenting (in other words,
the source culture), they are concerned with idelity towards their target audience or
consumer culture. This acknowledges the situation of many cinemagoers who have also
grown up since the demise of this regime, and hence have no immediate experience of
it. Thus, the ilm shot within the ilm becomes an idea of communism of someone who
has never really lived it, unlike Gulea’s main ilm, where the director, now in his seven-
ties, has spent a large proportion of his life under this regime and made a radical stance
against it through his earlier work, some of which pioneered verbatim techniques in
Romanian cinema (cf. Piața Universității—România, 1991, Vulpe—vânător, 1993, Stare de
fapt, 1995.) Through the integration of the ilm within the ilm, Gulea deploys a subtle
ironic twist: the ilm being made by the young crew intimates an anticommunist agenda

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(referencing the fact that anticommunism has become the state discourse par excel-
lence in present-day Romania), while it also includes actual communist-era propaganda
material. Contrasting the two reminds the audience of two lenses through which to
view the world and also calls attention to their respective potential for distortion and
misrepresentation.
In the novel and stage adaptation, Alice is a minor character whose phone call has
the function to trigger Emilia’s investigation into her past. In the ilm, however, she
spends considerable time visiting her parents. This instance of adaptation as ‘trans-
lation’ (cf. Stam: 62)  focuses deliberately on gaining another interpretive dimension,
and it is indeed an inspired decision in that it highlights the opposition between past
(mother) and future (daughter) and also ofers a younger character for audiences to
empathise with. The overt opposition between the two women, however, alters the
dynamic between them and takes away some of the subtleties inherent in the novel and
stage adaptation where it is Emilia’s own consciousness that starts her of to acknowl-
edge her mistakes rather than the explanations coming from Alice. Alice urges Emilia
to vote for anyone but the communists in the local elections. For Emilia, however, com-
munism connotes the realization of her personal dreams, and she is unable to view it
in a broader perspective:
Alice: Tell me, mum, what exactly did these communists ofer you? Except for lies, terror,
queues and fear … what else did they actually provide?
Emilia: I’m talking about my life, Alice, not that of others. First and foremost, it was commu-
nism that made it possible for me to move to town. (Lungu 63, my translation and emphasis)

This opposition between divergent stances gains further proportions with the involve-
ment of another middle-aged woman, Mrs Stroescu, who has a radically diferent expe-
rience of communism. Unlike Emilia, who came from a social class favoured by the
communists, Mrs Stroescu belonged to what was termed as ‘class enemies’ (she was the
daughter of a well-respected businessman persecuted during the communist regime)
and struggled for decades to make a living. Communism destroyed her life, while the
present allows her the possibility of retribution. Not developing the character of Mrs
Stroescu can of course be perceived as another missed opportunity as far as the con-
demnation of Emilia’s decisions is concerned. Following Gulea’s declared intentions,
however, he was not set out to make a ilm about prosecuting Emilia and the ilm is
 Timeliness, Nostalgia and the Authenticity of Experience PAGE 9 OF 11

not intended as a critique of communism per se. As a ilm about nostalgia, Alice and
Mrs Stroescu’s presence introduces just about an adequate amount of confrontation to
acknowledge alternative views but allows the protagonist to carry on with her life-long
dependence on illusions. In the novel and stage version, Emilia becomes aware of the
fact that she lived under a terrible illusion, while in the ilm she remains more or less
captive to her idealized past. For this reason, Emilia can be rightly compared with the
character of the mother in the 2003 international box oice hit Good Bye, Lenin!, a ilm
credited for launching the ongoing debate on communist nostalgia.
In addition to the transmutations of plot, timing, and character mentioned above,
there is one striking departure from the novel—and without parallel in the stage
adaptation—a scene that was read by some critics as a coded celebration of commu-
nism and critique of capitalism. It generated considerable controversy in the cultural

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press, as the plausibility of some poor Romanian pensioners being able to inancially
help their daughter abroad was called into question. Alice reveals that she is preg-
nant, that they have lost their jobs and, unless they raise $15,000, they will lose their
home. This detail is an important acknowledgement of the global inancial crisis that
does not only afect Romania, and hence it is not only Emilia who had a better life
in the past. The money needed by Alice, however, is a relative fortune by Romanian
standards and not readily available in cash. Totally dedicated parents as they are—
and this is a plausible aspect of the ilm—Emilia and Tucu have no hesitation in
attempting everything in their power to raise this money (Emilia even shows entrepre-
neurial spirit by trying to revive the now disused communist-era factory), and when
everything fails, they put their sole asset, their lat, as collateral to borrow the money
at an exorbitant commission rate, as it happens from an immigrant—a Chinese mon-
eylender. This incident leads to the novel’s conclusion being ‘totally transigured’
in the ilm version (Hutcheon 12), constituting perhaps the most radical instance
of adaptation as translation to be discussed here. This translation is Gulea’s most
principled departure in his intersemiotic transfer from novel to ilm, which forces the
protagonist to re-evaluate her own sense of personal history and reconigures her
relationship with all others.
The ilm ends with Emilia and Tucu in their car, loaded with furniture, on the road
out of town. (By contrast, both novel and stage play end with the protagonist alone
in her lat, musing over her vote in the forthcoming elections, and they intimate that
Emilia may not even participate in them as her idealized view of communism has been
shattered.) As the ilm concludes, there is no clear mention as to where the protagonists
might be going; all that is shown is that they are at ease with their decision and their
personal loss is immaterial in this context. Credible as the idea of such a parental sacri-
ice might seem in a world where family values still matter, it is nevertheless essentialist
to suggest that Romanian kinship links are strong enough to tolerate self-sacriice at
such a scale. It is also somewhat supercilious to intimate that Romanian hospitality
and helpfulness can extend to the ambition of saving Western capitalism. This conclu-
sion also brings Emilia’s personal journey full circle: the ilm started with her arrival
to town and ends with her departure, but this time she does not perceive returning to
the country as a failure. This sacriice is signiicantly underplayed in the ilm—and is
another bold adaptive decision, as the novel and stage adaptation accentuate that for
PAGE 10 OF 11 JozEfiNA KomporAlY

Emilia moving back to her village would be the ultimate defeat, it is as if she had ‘lived
her life in vain’.
The above notwithstanding, both ilm and play adaptations centre on credible
human types whose experience is rooted in contemporary reality. Both ofer imagina-
tive insights into the relationship between theatre, ilm, history, and memory and con-
vincingly explore historical visions and alternative temporalities. Both adaptations ofer
a successful transcoding involving a shift of medium (novel to ilm, and novel to stage
play), and the ilm also includes occasional shifts in focalization, by telling the same
story from a diferent point of view. I aim to show the usefulness of viewing adaptation
as an instance of translation, as long as there is a principled efort to assume the inevi-
table losses and gains incurred in the process of intersemiotic transposition. Gulea’s
directorial agenda occasionally accounts for such cases in point, in addition to which

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the ilm version also fulils the criteria of adaptation as ‘commentary’, while the stage
play is more or less a case of ‘transposition’, albeit with signiicant editing.
Despite the novelist’s, ilm director’s, and scriptwriter’s claims that political propa-
ganda was not envisaged by them as a major outcome, it is highly unlikely for such a
novel, ilm, or play not to be perceived in this light too. The character of Emilia cannot
be fully dissociated from a celebration of communist inertia, whereas the scene in the
ilm where the couple borrow money intimates an anticapitalist tone, which is ampli-
ied by the recognition that their daughter is having inancial struggles in the West. For
Gulea, however, the agenda was not to ofer a critique of capitalism or glorify commu-
nism but address parental sacriice. In an age where the traditional family is disappear-
ing, this is a political point in itself, as it provides an argument against the atomization
of society. It is not accidental in this sense, that the ilm struck a chord with older view-
ers, who often feel that the now internationally famous New Wave in Romanian cinema
ofers an unnecessarily sharp critique of the present and presents Romanian realities in
an unfavourable light. In addition to a global recession, Romania also has to struggle
with a very negative image problem, and people have rightly started to lose faith. In
Gulea’s view, Romanian society needed a positive ilm with a message of reconciliation
to counterbalance the tension that dominates the world at present (Gulea interviewed
by Komporaly). This is why works of art that recover history as a process encompassing
equally valid multiple experiences are important. Following on from Hayden White,
work that is largely founded on recreation and textual elaboration has the potential to
productively braid concerns in historical and adaptation studies. Moreover, the study of
adaptation can in this way join ‘with the study of recycling, remaking, and every other
form of retelling’ (Naremore 15) in a bold and boundary-challenging interdisciplinary
process.

NoTES
1
So far, all this sounds like an unlikely box oice hit, as neither cinemagoers nor theatre patrons in
Romania are currently accustomed to encountering the experience of mature women as the main focus of
ilms or plays. In this sense, both stage and screen adaptations have taken a major risk in ofering a platform
for a relatively marginalized category, however, by utilizing a carefully edited script/screenplay and cast-
ing charismatic actresses in the title role (one of the most loved Romanian actresses, Luminiţa Gheorghiu
stars in the ilm, and veteran stage actress Judit Csoma is the protagonist of the play), they succeeded in
attracting a loyal audience.
 Timeliness, Nostalgia and the Authenticity of Experience PAGE 11 OF 11

2
As a ilm director and screenwriter, Stere Gulea is particularly respected for adapting one of the most
celebrated Romanian postwar novels, Marin Preda’s Moromeţii [The Moromete Family], an epic family
saga set in the mythical peasant world of the Romanian South. Compare Moromeţii. Dir. Stere Gulea.
Romaniailm, 1987.
3
Compare the detailed debates in Observator Cultural and Adevărul, August–September 2013.

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