Originally released in 1994, Romanian director Nae Caranfil's feature Don't Lean Out the Window concurrently functions as a seriocomedy of intersecting lives and a sociopolitical allegory. On an individual level, the story concerns itself with three characters: a pretty young student named Cristina (Nathalie Bonnifay); the soldier, Horatiu (Marius Stanescu), with whom she is romantically entangled; and a stage and film actor named Dinu (George Alexandru). On an allegorical level, the film meditates on the difficult transitions undergone by the Romanian people as a whole in the wake of Nicolae Ceauscescu's departure from office. Formically, Caranfil divides his feature into three related sections, each devoted to one of the said characters: "The Student," "The Actor" and "The Soldier." In "The Student," Caranfil ideologically underscores the collapse of Romanian society into chaos and anarchy, via a teacher aggressively attempting to assert the state-sanctioned natality policy while a bunch of wild students disseminate birth control pills. Cristina, of course, sits among those students; she spends her extracurricular hours sorting out tubers for a socialist farm and studying constantly with super-intellectual Horatiu. In the second chapter, "The Actor," Dinu suddenly approaches Cristina to question her about her possible authorship of secret admirer letters, and in the process subtly implies that he may represent a way out of her sad existence. The third chapter, as might be expected, shifts focus to hone in on Horatiu, as he lives out the final days of his military service and looks ahead to the future. Caranfil then doubles back and brings all of his characters together for an epilogue. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi