For those prepared to invest the time, One Floor Below quietly builds into a devastating portrait of a weak man and the weak society he represents, both of which have lost their moral compasses.
Like a pot set to bubble only every few seconds, the drama is tightly measured to ensure a controlled level of tension that remains discreetly constant, nicely melding with Muntean’s skilled construction of three-dimensional bourgeois life.
This is detached, flat film-making at its most bare. You figure out which lines of dialogue deserve to be underlined.
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CineVueBen Nicholson
CineVueBen Nicholson
To suggest that One Floor Below operates at a simmer would be to exaggerate the level of heat being applied to the pot. This is one that Muntean is happy to let bubble intermittently, cranking the tension around on a scarcely-moving winch.