A movie that grows on you, scene by scene - Tuesday, After Christmas

The Romanian film "Tuesday, After Christmas" is a classic example a film that grows on you, gets better scene by scene as it gradually draws you in, and ends up being a very fine portrait of a marriage in decay and the idiotic decisions made by a young husband who thinks he can leave his wife for a much younger woman - and learns the truth. It's a totally uncompromising film - and a difficult film, hard to like because the central character are not winning or charming, but a completely honest and direct and therefore impressive movie - very few scenes, almost no exteriors, each scene guite long, dialog-dominated, almost always filmed by a single camera from a fixed position - can remind you maybe of Cassavetes or even Ozu - starts with a very long scene of the young (30ish) husband and the girl, naked (nothing's hidden) on a bed, talking playfully, and through their talk we gradually learn who they are - that he's married with a daughter - and that's the way the movie unfolds - each scene gives us a bit more information, and we put everything together just as if we are a witness to these many conversations, there's no exposition and no narrative structure imposed from outside. There is an arc to the story, however, that peaks when the husband confesses his infidelity, and then we get several long and powerful scenes of the deluge - the wife goes from shocked silence to tearful, violent outbursts, and finally to curt and clipped and very angry control: she kicks him out, he pretends to be hurt but he's such a snake and a fool and he expects her to be thankful that he's confessed, and then we see him moving into the girlfriend's tiny apartment, it looks like a dorm room, and we know and he knows - though nobody says anything - that this will never work, that he's cut off from his family and he will soon be alone.