If there is or will be aNew Wave in Romanian cinema, Alexandru Tatos joins Dan Pita in its vanguard. As critic Manuela Cernatwrites, "Where he excels with unparalleled gusto is the movie with few characters and the minimumnarrative elements, on which he capitalizes with the utmost ingeniousness, matchlessly blending lyricismand sarcasm, and displaying an unusually keen sense of true-to-life psychological and environmentaldetails." This is as true of the three Tatos films previously shown at PFA-Gently Was Anastasia Passing,Forest Fruit and Sequences-as it is of Gathering Clouds. Tatos uses an old adage-that a drowning manrecalls his entire life in the minute preceding his death-to unfold, in a complex flashback format, the storyof the life of a World War I veteran (played by the fine stage actor Ion Caramitru), a one-time gad-aboutwhose combat experience and consequent disfigurement hasten his descent into moral turpitude. In suicide,his guilt merges with that of the world he lived in.