“ROMANIAN WAVES”
Can a ‘new wave’ find validation solely within the confines of a single film festival? MIFF says: yes! But so do lots of people. A whole slate of recent Cannes-award-winning Ceausescu-dominated works here, and a couple ancillaries. Get awakened, Melbourne.
12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST — This, along with The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu, is where the success began (and indeed the ‘new wave’). Awarded the Camera D’Or in 2006 (by The Brothers Dardennes, no less), writer/director Corneliu Porumboiu has yet to follow up on this; a common feature within this Romanian surge and a key aspect to some of the criticism of it.
BOOGIE – Working with co-writer Razvan Radulescu – also co-writer of Lazarescu, The Paper Will Be Blue (below) and a handful of others, and one of the few key creatives amassing something resembling a body of work amongst this movement – “hard-working” director Radu Muntean’s portrait of a ”regular” relationship is the newest work on display here. Could its primary concern – one of contemporary happiness juxtaposed against a history of nefariousness and personal irresponsibility- be accounted for as metaphorical? Would one be wrong in doing so?
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ (ENDLESS) – With what could only be described as a tragic history, the much-discussed (Endless) version of the late Cristian Nemescu’s only feature California Dreamin’ arrives at last. It’s a black comedy, of course. There will also be a separate session comprised of three of Nemescu’s early shorts: C Block Story, Mihai And Cristina, and Marilena From P7.
THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU – Epic, absurdist, “nothing if not visceral“ and indeed a “methodically driven temporal expansion of a man’s last few hours“, Cristi Puiu’s epically celebrated ode to mortality truly begat this new wave’s renown; its 2005 Cannes reception the genuine tipping point between mere geographically bordered film output and a collective and centrally anchored body of work.
OCCIDENT — 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days writer/director Christian Mungiu’s blackly funny and “socially perspicacious” debut feature is “too carefully written by half“, but has been compared to Nae Caranfil’s watershed post-Ceausescu comedy Don’t Lean Out The Window, a chief inspiration for this generation of post-Ceausescu comedians.
THE PAPER WILL BE BLUE – Radu Muntean’s second feature – a street-level perspective of the night of Ceausescu’s fall and the breakdown in communication that was borne of the rioting - precedes his later Boogie by two years. I don’t want to read the words ‘black’ and ‘comedy’ for a little while.
