Romania

If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (2010)

André Crous

The boy with the peaceful demeanour should not be underestimated. He has been biding his time, but when things don’t work out the way he was expecting, he takes a violent leap to seize a fantasy of stability.

if-i-want-to-whistleRomania
4*

Director:
Florin Șerban
Screenwriters:
Florin Șerban
Cătălin Mitulescu
Director of Photography:
Marius Panduru

Running time: 90 minutes

Original title: Eu când vreau să fluier, fluier

Don’t think for a moment the soft-spoken boy from a broken home who has spent the past four years in a juvenile detention centre has not been affected by his immediate surroundings. He seems to be in complete control of himself, resisting the provocations of many of his fellow inmates and even seemingly ignoring the sexual assault that takes place from time to time. The director calls him a “good boy”, one who has not made any trouble and is even allowed a second chance.

But just nine days before his release, the 18-year-old Silviu Chişcan, originally from the east Romanian town of Brăila, gets a visit from his younger brother, Marius, who tells him their mother has found a job in Italy and will take him with her within a few days, perhaps even before he is released. This visit nearly coincides with the appearance on the scene of a young social worker, Ana, whom Silviu fantasises about (as do nearly all the other young men who rarely get to see a woman) and expects to go on a date with once he returns to a free society.

When I Whistle, I Whistle is a film that is all about control and eventually about the loss of control. Its main character avoids lashing out at anyone and keeps his emotions bottled up inside until the very end because he does not want to spend the rest of his life in this place. But others around him throw obstacles in his way, and so does his mother when she hits him repeatedly upon visiting him on one of his final days behind bars. And yet, he does not react.

As should be expected, all of his pent-up anger eventually comes to a boil, at a time and in a way that is unfortunate at first, and ultimately even tragic. Fortunately, the story’s development is far from morose, and actor George Pistereanu with his big black eyes is absolutely mesmerising in the lead. The explosion of fury that kicks off the third act does not arrive out of the blue but is brilliantly and powerfully foreshadowed by the film’s most impressive scene: the day Silviu’s estranged mother pays him a visit, and he lets loose a torrent of contempt for the way she treated him and her role in sending his life down the tubes. The scene is tense to the point of being hypnotising and despite Silviu not reacting in the way we expect him to, there is something cathartic about his performance.

Marius Panduru’s camera yields images that while obtained by hand-held cameras are restrained in their shakiness — an apt visual reflection of the tension between the central character’s external appearance and internal well of emotions. Director Florin Șerban focuses our attention with short bursts of information through editing that allows us to glimpse a potential threat that immediately captures out even though it often lasts for a very brief moment.

At other points, however, the film has no problem letting us wait for the Silviu to gather his thoughts. The camera stays on him while he is thinking, considering whether or not (and how) to react to harassment or what he perceives to be injustice. It is a fascinating look at people whose lives do not unfold according to the rules of a screenwriting manual but are immensely interesting because of the way the filmmaker here presents them to his audience. The actors are equally important in this regard, and one particular scene late at night, during which Silviu insistently whispers in the ear of a friend so that he can borrow his phone, is riveting because we know there is always the potential for violence to erupt at the drop of a hat.

While short of plot, this 90-minute film is deep on emotion and back story, and although we often wait for Silviu to show his fighting spirit, he should not be underestimated. This is a man who has spent the past four years in an atmosphere that is far from gentle, and context certainly informs character. Those who miscalculate the effect on a young man who would hold onto whatever stability he can find at any cost do so at their peril.

Police, Adjective (2009)

André Crous

Romania
3.5*

Director: 
Corneliu Porumboiu
Screenwriter: 
Corneliu Porumboiu
Director of Photography:
Marius Panduru

Running time: 110 min

Original title: Poliţist, Adjectiv

Cristi is a policeman, but he does not have the kind of life we have come to associate, through the American film industry, with the cop genre. He has been assigned to a case of teenage marijuana consumption, and by the looks of things, this is going to be about as exciting as watching paint dry. The opening scene consists of Cristi following a teenage boy between his school and his home. Perhaps another film would have created some mystery about Cristi’s intentions – I’m thinking of the Dardennes brothers’ The Son (le Fils). But Cristi’s lack of self-consciousness indicates that he has probably done this kind of thing before and that he is very likely a policeman.

Our suspicions are confirmed in the following scene, at a meeting between him and one of his superiors. This is also one of the rare times that Cristi, whose face is generally expressionless, betrays any emotion. He has been following the teenage boy and his friends for a while, and he has dutifully written up and submitted his detailed reports, but he finds the mission rather senseless since no other country in Europe would prosecute anybody for smoking marijuana. He suggests they go after a friend, who might be a dealer, but his superior dismisses his suggestion.

The rest of the film contains many more scenes, often filmed in long takes, of Cristi tailing one of the schoolchildren. Sometimes he is lucky: They smoke something, and he gets to recover the butt, to determine whether it was tobacco or marijuana. But more often than not, he just makes a note of the vehicle registration number or a visitor’s times of arrival and departure.

As far as long takes are concerned, the film seems to have a Tarr-esque obsession with recording the passage of time, and in two scenes director Corneliu Porumboiu films actor Dragoş Bucur, who plays Cristi, eating alone at his small kitchen table. The one takes place in complete silence, the other is accompanied by the very bad music (“Nu te părăsesc iubire” by Mirabela Dauer) played on YouTube by Cristi’s wife, with whom he is clearly not very enamoured. And we are not much taken with her either, given her choice of song and her choice to repeat the song ad nauseam.

The film is ultimately an intellectual exercise about the use of language. It is, by no means, the kind of film one has in mind when thinking of a “police film”, which demonstrates the conventional use of “police” as an adjective, but which this film does not exemplify. So what? The scenes showing Cristi’s anxiety at challenging the status quo, namely his superiors, are infinitely more illuminating and constitute the only real points of dramatic interest in this film.

The Way I Spent the End of the World (2006)

André Crous

The Way I Spent the End of the WorldRomania
3.5*

Director:
Cătălin Mitulescu
Screenwriters: 
Cătălin Mitulescu
Andreea Valean
Director of Photography:
Marius Panduru

Running time: 110 minutes

Original title: Cum mi-am petrecut sfârşitul lumii

By the end of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s decades-long reign, the ruthless Romanian dictator who had inspired fear in his people was a laughing stock, and while most people showed reverence to him in public, he was the object of ridicule in private.

Director Cătălin Mitulescu’s debut film, one of the gems of the Romanian New Wave, gives us a glimpse of life under the bereted leader who, in a hilarious opening scene, snatches a large block of cheese from a schoolboy because he hasn’t teethed yet. This boy, Lali (short for Lalalilu), should have been the focus of the film. If this were the case, this could easily have been one of the finest films of the Romanian New Wave. The boy is cute and curious with a natural acting ability and none of the contrivances of so many performances by child actors.

But we don’t get him in the lead. Instead, what we are left with is a very patchy storyline involving Eva, Lali’s older sister, who in her final year of high school has to choose between Alex, the slightly rebellious but well-intentioned son of a high-ranking Communist Party official, and Andrei, a boy whose ingenuity makes up for his looks. In one of the best scenes of the film, Alex knocks over a bust of Ceaușescu at his and Eva’s school; when they are both discovered at the scene of the crime, they are expelled and sent to a technical school outside the city.

There are interesting bits of narrative here and there – in particular, the plan hatched by Andrei to escape with Eva across the Danube, and their preparations for this adventure – but often the motivations are not well established, and when it transpires that Andrei and Eva are not on the same page when they find themselves halfway across the river in the middle of the night, the change of heart is left unexplained.

The film offers a nice sketch of the last year of Ceaușescan Romania, where regular power cuts and a general lack of rations are the order of the day, and the political situation is not the focus of the film. Fair enough. But Eva’s character arc is difficult to grasp, while her brother Lali’s adventurous spirit (he even has a plan to assassinate the country’s leader, but his plans fall apart when the revolution arrives) makes for arresting viewing but gets too little coverage. I would have liked a more coherent storyline for Eva, but given he is a first-time director, Mitulescu has staged his film very competently.