Între­galde – first-look review

Ah, sweet Roma­nia: land of weath­er­beat­en fences and faces, of bureau­crat­ic grid­lock and gov­ern­men­tal cor­rup­tion. In the films col­lect­ed under the infor­mal umbrel­la of its New Wave, the coun­try comes off look­ing mal­nour­ished and devel­op­men­tal­ly stunt­ed, its bro­ken state infra­struc­ture and wide­spread reac­tionary atti­tudes mak­ing even the sim­plest task into a drawn-out, pes­simisti­cal­ly absurd ordeal with shades of Franz Kafka.

In the case of the lat­est film from Radu Muntean – a key New Waver, though he lacks the name recog­ni­tion and awards hard­ware of his com­pa­tri­ots Cris­t­ian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu and Cor­neliu Porum­boiu – the objec­tive at hand is a short yet treach­er­ous dri­ve through the mud­di­est tracts of rur­al Tran­syl­va­nia. A group of human­i­tar­i­an work­ers have loaded up on sacks of pro­vi­sions and set a course for a remote vil­lage that could real­ly use the aid, but they’ll soon find that effect­ing pos­i­tive change doesn’t come easy in a region where even the ground beneath your feet con­spires against you.

The age demo­graph­ics pro­vide the first hint at an alle­gor­i­cal sub­text, the vol­un­teers all in a thir­tysome­thing brack­et mak­ing them de fac­to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the mod­ern Roma­nia. On their way through the net­work of unpaved dirt paths, they encounter a rel­ic of the old­er gen­er­a­tion, a shriv­elled-up man named Kente (Luca Sabin) hop­ing for a ride to a near­by mill. They pick him up and ven­ture into a fore­bod­ing for­est, where their tires lose trac­tion and aggra­va­tion mounts as quick­ly as night falls.

In essence, the strand­ed car is an immov­able object sug­gest­ing today’s way­ward Roma­nia, stag­nat­ing in its effort to build and improve by a pop­u­lace at odds with itself. Though their motives may not be purest altru­ism, Maria (Maria Popis­tașu) and Dan (Alex Bog­dan) want to bring wel­fare pro­grams to iso­lat­ed com­munes like the one sup­ply­ing the title, suf­fer­ing in their seclu­sion. Cen­sus infor­ma­tion indi­cates that the age of the aver­age Între­galde res­i­dent is around 60, explain­ing the pre­cip­i­tous decrease in their num­bers over the past few decades. One vil­lage with­in the sub­di­vi­sion has but a sin­gle inhabitant.

Kente’s fix­a­tion on the mill ges­tures to a sig­ni­fi­er of nation­al indus­try long since rust­ed out, a read affirmed once every­one gets there only to find it aban­doned. Muntean plays this scene in a gen­tly mourn­ful tone, nev­er scorn­ful of the senile wan­der­er dis­tressed to watch the world he knows dis­ap­pear­ing. He and his peers have grown unable to care for them­selves, and as the ten­der sponge bath he’s giv­en near the close of the film makes clear, it’s our respon­si­bil­i­ty to look after our elders.

But the younger ele­ment hard­ly pro­vides a moral exem­plar, start­ing from Dan’s con­stant den­i­gra­tion of Kente’s homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. (As evi­dent in the work of Muntean’s coun­try­man Radu Jude, a strong under­cur­rent of social con­ser­vatism is alive and well in the area.) When a pair of Romani trav­ellers pass by and offer their assis­tance, the racism still fes­ter­ing against this mar­gin­alised eth­nic group doesn’t take long to jump out. For all their ideas about progress, the adults soon to dic­tate the direc­tion of Roma­nia remain stuck in the past on some cru­cial matters.

In a film with more going on beneath the sur­face than in terms of con­crete action, the end prod­uct can some­times be less stim­u­lat­ing to watch than to think about. Though his leisure­ly pac­ing may require some get­ting used to, Muntean large­ly avoids this with lib­er­al dol­lops of dry humour, from the inher­ent slap­stick of dis­lodg­ing a stalled vehi­cle to Kente’s pro­cliv­i­ty for non sequiturs.

The occa­sion­al mood-light­en­er helps along a film pitched from a drea­ry soci­o­log­i­cal van­tage, its pre­vail­ing asser­tion being that internecine con­flicts will leave Roma­nia spin­ning its wheels. The for­giv­ing final moments clar­i­fy that Muntean’s not total­ly with­out hope, but as dynam­ics cur­rent­ly stand, everyone’s lost.