This is a hilarious collection of 5 short stories connected by a single theme: life in communist Romania in the 1980s. It made me laugh more than most Hollywood comedies, that's for sure!
They used to call these Portmaneau films, and companies like Hammer used to do them a lot, in films like Dead of Night, or with passengers on a train telling heir tales, or with characters connected by objects bought by people from an old antiques shop (which led to horror tales), and another one where people stared inot shears and had dreams.
Anyway, I loved this movie - and would happily watch it again. There are 5 tales for me - the strongest for me being the first (the Merrygoround (a great metaphor for communism), the second (about the photographer) and the hilariou penultimate tale about the pig.
Acting and direction are spot-on, and the scripts made me and those with me laugh: there are some real absurdities and paradoxes, which are all too often based on the almost surreally absurd realities to communism: things like this really happened back then.
Five stars.