Questions of New Romanian Cinema

In her first review for Rogue Diplomat, Kate McCarthy reviews a Romanian Film that made a big impression at last year’s Cannes film festival, as well as looking the blossoming Romanian Film Industry. Kate currently works for the Irish Film Institute in Dublin and holds an MA in Media Studies & International Conflict.

“Have we left one cave for an even bigger cave?”

Questions of New Romanian Cinema

Police, Adjective, winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival last year, is the new offering from Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, and the latest in a series of critically-lauded productions that have given rise to the ‘Romanian New Wave’. The excitement that surrounds current Romania’s contemporary national cinema looks set to continue with this clever and intriguing feature. Set in the town of Vaslui, it tells the story of Cristi, a young policeman in post-Ceausescu Romania, who is faced with an ethical dilemma when ordered by his superiors to arrest a young teenage boy for sharing marijuana with his friends – an offence that would result in a prison sentence of between 3 and 7 years.

Much of the action focuses on Cristi’s quiet trailing of the boy back and forth from his school playground. In what has become an almost recognisable Romanian style there are numerous long takes, as Cristi stands for hours in the autumnal streets outside the teenager’s house, his solitary and dispassionate fulfilment of police procedure broken intermittently by dry exchanges with his colleagues or his wife.

Romanian cinema has garnered increasing critical and scholarly attention over the last decade, and despite the dangers of generalising about an entire national cinema, it is difficult not to make connections between Police, Adjective and other recent productions, particularly Porumboiu’s earlier work - 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006), and Cristi Puiu’s excellent The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005). For these films arguably have as much to say about Romania as they do about their individual characters. And it is the darker aspect of Romanian life and society that these directors have set out to explore.

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