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Movies & TV

Hotel Dallas

HOTEL DALLAS (Livia Ungur, Sherng-Lee Huang, Romania/U.S.). 76 minutes. Rating: NN


During the last years of Nicolae Ceauçsescu’s regime, one of the only non-propaganda things Romanians could watch on TV was the nighttime soap Dallas, possibly to show them the evils of capitalism. 

This experimental doc looks at the cultural implications of that bizarre fact. We meet characters like a (sunflower) oil baron influenced by Dallas’s baddie, JR, a Stetson-wearing aspiring artist who wants to emigrate to Manhattan and a mysterious man named Mr. Here voiced by Patrick Duffy, who played JR’s brother, Bobby.

Blending truth and fiction and employing musical sequences to no purpose, this pretentious film comes to life only intermittently, especially during one sequence set in Romania’s Merry Cemetery. 

Apr 30, 6:30 pm, Scotiabank 4 May 1, 2 pm, Scotiabank 7 May 6, TIFF 4

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