15 years on, the Roman­ian New Wave is still a force to be reck­oned with

This year marks the 30^th anniver­sary of the bloody rev­o­lu­tion that top­pled Nico­lae Ceaușescu’s dic­ta­tor­ship. A lot has changed in Roma­nia since then, yet sto­ries about his repres­sive régime and the socio-eco­nom­ic con­vul­sions that fol­lowed con­tin­ue to dom­i­nate Roman­ian cin­e­ma. How­ev­er, despite the con­tin­ued suc­cess of real­ist direc­tors like Cristi Puiu, Cris­t­ian Mungiu and Călin Peter Net­zer, there was a notice­able appetite for change at this year’s Tran­syl­va­nia Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val.

Held annu­al­ly in Cluj-Napoca, the fes­ti­val has become a plat­form for pro­mot­ing and cel­e­brat­ing the nation’s vibrant film indus­try. Cen­tral to this is the Roma­nia Days pro­gram, which this year boast­ed 15 home­grown fea­ture films and 22 shorts. Some of these, like Cătălin Rotaru and Gabi Vir­ginia Șarga’s Thou Shalt Not Kill and Radu Muntean’s Alice T, per­se­vered with the nat­u­ral­ist aes­thet­ic of the Roman­ian New Wave, while oth­ers looked to evolve the house style.

The hottest tick­et at this year’s event was Cor­neliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers. Porum­boiu has always loi­tered on the fringes of the New Wave, lac­ing his obser­va­tions about Roman­ian soci­ety with absur­dist humour. His lat­est is no dif­fer­ent, an odd­ball crime thriller that charts the down­fall of Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) a cor­rupt police inspec­tor who finds him­self entan­gled in a mon­ey laun­der­ing scam. When things inevitably go wrong – as they almost always do for Porumboiu’s pro­tag­o­nists – he’s sent to the Span­ish island of La Gomera to learn an obscure whistling lan­guage so he can com­mu­ni­cate with his fel­low crooks with­out alert­ing the police.

The Whistlers, not only rep­re­sents a geo­graph­i­cal depar­ture for Porum­boiu, but a styl­is­tic one too, with his nar­ra­tive echo­ing count­less film noirs such as The Mal­tese Fal­con, Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty and The Big Sleep. Although lack­ing the nation­al intro­spec­tion of his ear­li­er work, Porumboiu’s lat­est does revive his fas­ci­na­tion with lin­guis­tics. It’s a top­ic he pre­vi­ous­ly explored in Police, Adjec­tive, which also starred Ivanov as a crooked police chief who, dur­ing the film’s dia­logue-heavy end­ing, uses a dic­tio­nary to humil­i­ate and under­mine a con­science strick­en cop.

Ten years lat­er and he’s still manip­u­lat­ing lan­guage to get his way, although this time it’s to avoid detec­tion in a world of increased sur­veil­lance. Although The Whistlers arguably fails to utilise the comedic poten­tial of its tit­u­lar device, Porumboiu’s lat­est study of the rela­tion­ship between lan­guage and the Law beau­ti­ful­ly artic­u­lates how cor­rup­tion has become a uni­ver­sal dialect.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, New Wave films like Puiu’s Stuff and Dough and Mungiu’s Grad­u­a­tion have sug­gest­ed that vio­lence is inevitable in a post-com­mu­nist state unac­cus­tomed to the com­pet­i­tive­ness of a mar­ket econ­o­my. How­ev­er, these vio­lent events could also be viewed as a hang­over from the oppres­sive con­trols imple­ment­ed dur­ing the final years of Ceausescu’s régime, the bru­tal­i­ty of which is explored in Andrei Cohn’s Arrest.

Win­ner of the festival’s Award for Best Fea­ture Film, this for­mal­ly inno­v­a­tive dra­ma about the inter­ro­ga­tion mea­sures used dur­ing the Com­mu­nist-era opens with Dinu (Alexan­dru Papadopol) being tak­en in for ques­tion­ing by the secret police. From here the film osten­si­bly becomes a two-hand­ed cham­ber piece, set almost entire­ly with­in a prison cell. Dinu is sus­pect­ed of col­lud­ing against the Par­ty and the fol­low­ing morn­ing he’s intro­duced to his cell­mate Vali (Iulian Postel­nicu) a small-time crook turned police col­lab­o­ra­tor. Vali ini­ti­ates what he refers to as his ​“repres­sive, restric­tive” style of inter­ro­ga­tion, inflict­ing a series of cal­lous beat­ings on Dinu, fol­lowed by what he sadis­ti­cal­ly refers to as ​“moments of rest and relaxation”.

To pull this kind of sim­ple premise off demands excep­tion­al per­for­mances, and the two leads rise com­mand­ing­ly to the chal­lenge. Papadopol, who received his break­through in Stuff and Dough, remains remark­ably dig­ni­fied despite the esca­lat­ing cru­el­ty he’s sub­mit­ted to, but it’s Postel­nicu, best known as the men­ac­ing antag­o­nist in Muntean’s One Floor Below, who aston­ish­es. Although much small­er in stature to Papadopol, he dom­i­nates pro­ceed­ings, switch­ing from gre­gar­i­ous cell­mate to unhinged psy­chopath in a heart­beat – with the quiv­er­ing inten­si­ty of his per­for­mance cre­at­ing a huge­ly uncom­fort­able atmosphere.

Cohn’s cat-and-mouse nar­ra­tive effi­cient­ly artic­u­lates the men­tal anguish of liv­ing under a repres­sive régime thanks to a script that snaps with the abrupt bar­bar­i­ty of a mouse­trap. As the beat­ings dished out by Vali inten­si­fy, the audi­ence is forced to imag­ine how they would cope in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. Although hard to stom­ach, these scenes nev­er suc­cumb to tawdry sen­sa­tion­al­ism, with Cohn film­ing the onscreen vio­lence from a detached per­spec­tive, afford­ing just enough space to con­sid­er the psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty of col­lu­sion with­in abu­sive pow­er structures.

Address­ing more con­tem­po­rary con­cerns, Mar­ius Olteanu’s Mon­sters. explores a top­ic rarely touched upon in Roman­ian cin­e­ma. It’s been over a decade since Tudor Giurgiu released the les­bian romance Love Sick, but since then Roman­ian direc­tors have tend­ed to steer clear of LGBT top­ics. It’s not sur­pris­ing when you con­sid­er how neg­a­tive reviews of Adi­na Pintilie’s provoca­tive study of sex­u­al inti­ma­cy Touch Me Not were appro­pri­at­ed by right-wing groups to jus­ti­fy their sup­port for last year’s ref­er­en­dum to estab­lish a con­sti­tu­tion­al ban on same-sex marriage.

Since then there have been signs of progress. Bog­dan Theodor Olteanu’s les­bian rela­tion­ship dra­ma Sev­er­al Con­ver­sa­tions About a Very Tall Girl received crit­i­cal acclaim for its ten­der explo­ration of the prej­u­dices preva­lent in Roman­ian soci­ety, but male homo­sex­u­al­i­ty still remains taboo.

A rela­tion­ship dra­ma neat­ly divid­ed into three seg­ments, Mon­sters takes place over the course of 24 hours, with the film explor­ing the con­flict between mod­ernising cul­tures and sex­u­al iden­ti­ty through a hus­band and wife strug­gling to self-actu­alise. Across the course of one night, the film fol­lows Dana (Judith State) whose rejec­tion of moth­er­hood has put her at odds with her friends and fam­i­ly. The focus then switch­es to her hus­band Arthur (Cris­t­ian Popa) as he hooks up with a stranger he meets on Grindr.

The film’s con­struc­tion is pre­cise­ly man­aged, with the first two chap­ters shot in a 1:1 square ratio to empha­sise the con­ser­vatism of Roman­ian soci­ety. Unlike con­ven­tion­al romances, where love blos­soms between two part­ners, here we observe a cou­ple attempt­ing to dis­man­tle their mar­riage to achieve a sem­blance of per­son­al growth, with Olteanu sug­gest­ing a lov­ing rela­tion­ship might not be the most nur­tur­ing space for a lib­er­at­ing explo­ration of identity.

It’s tes­ta­ment to the vital­i­ty of Roman­ian cin­e­ma that the Tran­syl­va­nia Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val con­tin­ues to dis­cov­er direc­tors like Olteanu, who are eager to rede­fine how their coun­try is por­trayed on-screen. His­tor­i­cal­ly, nation­al film move­ments don’t last long, but 15 years since the New Wave ignit­ed with Cătălin Mitulescu’s Traf­fic, it doesn’t look like Roman­ian cin­e­ma is going any­where any­time soon.

For more on this year’s Tran­syl­va­nia Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val vis­it tiff​.ro