Corneliu Porumboiu is one of my favorite directors coming out of what is known as The Romanian New Wave. Anyone who has been watching knows that something is going ON in Romania right now, cinematically.
Porumboiu’s first feature was the marvelous and hilarious and cynical-as-hell 12:08 East of Bucharest (my review here), a real attention-getter in terms of the script, the WAY it was shot (the majority of it takes place in a tiny rat-trap cable-access television studio, and then we watch the cable-access show proceed, in all its absurdity), and the frank dealing with the Romanian experience of the fall of communism. Must-see.
His next feature was Police Adjective, a genre picture, a cop picture, but also with that sharp sharp social commentary on Romania’s drug laws. Also a must-see.
Then there came 2013’s When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (my review here), which I fell in love with. It’s very very meta (there’s usually some meta quality in Porumboiu’s work), about a film director having an affair with his lead actress while they are working on a film. It’s all about the visuals, the center and the periphery. All done in a series of long long takes where the camera never moves. Another attention-getter.
Porumboiu writes all of these films, too, so each one is extremely personal in different ways.
Other film-makers to watch coming out of Romania are Andrei Ujică whose 3-hour The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu, made up entirely of extant footage of the hated and executed Stalinist former leader of Romania, has to be seen to be believed.
Then there’s Calin Peter Netzer, whose Child’s Pose won accolades around the world, and rightly so. An extraordinary performance from the lead actress, Luminita Gheorghiu. I reviewed for Roger Ebert.
There’s Cristi Puiu, whose film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is essential. It was one of the first major films to emerge from Romania post-Communism.
And then there’s the brilliant Cristian Mungiu, whose films get major play (at least in the United States). The harrowing “Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days (please see it!), and the even more harrowing Beyond the Hills my review here, which I put on my Top 10 List for that year. During the course of that long slow film, I felt more claustrophobic than I’ve felt in a theatre in a long time. I was desperate for release, for myself, and for the characters. So upsetting I had to take a long walk to shake it off. Don’t miss that one either. (And maybe wait to read my review after you’ve seen it. Just know that the film is very long, with a deathly slow pace, and again the camera rarely moves. Succumb to the pacing because that’s where the guts of the film, its effectiveness, lies).
This is a MAJOR film industry, producing directors with unique and personal visions, all that mix politics and social commentary, plus an awareness of the ravages of decades of Communism that decimated their country. These films attempt to deal with the aftermath.
Corneliu Porumboiu has a new film out called The Treasure which is making the festival rounds currently and I can’t wait to see it. Patrick McGavin from Rogerebert.com interviewed Porumboiu after seeing the film at the Chicago International Film Festival. It’s a wonderful interview, with some great insights by Porumboiu, not only about his film and his own style, but about his generation of film-makers, all of the ones I just mentioned, who are all about the same age (which is even more telling). They started exploding in the 90s, as they came to maturity. As Romania started slowly to open up to the world they had been barricaded away from by the monstrous Ceaușescu.
There’s so much going on there it’s hard to keep up, but I always get excited when I hear one of these guys has produced something new.
Again, here’s the link to McGavin’s interview with Porumboiu.
