After watching a film, one thing I like to do is do a little research on it as typically there’s something I’ll learn. It could be something simple such as finding out it’s based on a novel, it could be that the film is an adaptation of another film, it could be information about what went into making the film, anything really. With Shirley, I learned in the credits that it’s adapted from a novel of the same name, but it gets even deeper than that: the novel is a homage to a real person. That person would be Shirley Jackson, who is known for her works of horror and mystery, consisting of several novels and many short stories. Admittedly, I’ve yet to read any of her works.

Up until seeing Stuff and Dough, the first film from director and writer Cristi Puiu, I had never seen a Romanian film before, so I was interested in seeing what this film would bring to the table. Virtually screened as part of the Philadelphia Lightbox Film Center’s “The Romanians: 30 Years of Cinema Revolution” collection of films, this one caught my attention and sounded worth checking out. In addition to being Puiu’s directorial debut, for two of the three main characters, this is also their film debuts. This was Alexandru Papadopol (Ovidiu) and Ioana Flora’s (Betty) first credited roles, whereas Dragos Bucur (Vali) had one previous role in 1998’s “Next Stop Paradise”, a film I also want to check out sometime down the road.