Call it what you will: Wave of Romanian films arrives

By Milan Paurich

The revolution of 1989 helped unite a new breed of directors.

YOUNGSTOWN — To put it in Fashion Week lingo, Romanian cinema is the new black.

Just like the Iranian, Asian, German, Czech and French New Waves that preceded it, the flood of exciting Romanian films and filmmakers making a splash on the international festival and arthouse circuit has sent critics into fits of delight — and confusion.

Do Cristian Mungiu (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”), Cristo Puiu (“The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”) and Corneliu Porumboiu (“12:08 East of Bucharest”) really signal the emergence of an official Romanian Nouvelle Vogue? Or are they just a temporary blip on the buff radar screen until The Next Big Thing (Sri Lankan, Bulgarian, Finnish, whatever) materializes?

According to Romanian film critic Alex Leo Serban, “there are no ‘waves’ ... just individuals.”

Puiu himself strongly denied the existence of any such movement (“There is not, not, not, not, not a Romanian new wave”) in a January New York Times article. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s only natural for trend-spotters — many of whom are film journalists anxious to make waves of their own — to jump on any perceived bandwagon.

What helped unite this new breed of directors — like the 1960’s Czech filmmakers who grappled with their newfound freedom during the “Prague Spring” — is, of course, the revolution of 1989. Mungiu, Puiu, et al were reacting to the bogus and inane movies produced in Romania during the communist era of Nicolae Ceausescu. The hunger for “real” stories about everyday lives was palpable, and these “neo-neorealists” explored formerly taboo subjects (including illegal abortions and the national health system in “4 Months” and “Mr. Lazarescu”) that wouldn’t have been possible less than a generation earlier.

Yet some unmistakable characteristics link these Romanian mavericks as well.

Screen naturalism is taken to remarkable levels of painstaking, gritty authenticity. With their long, uninterrupted takes, unobtrusive camerawork and seemingly caught-on-the-fly dialogue, the new Romanian films seem more like cinema verit than conventionally scripted drama. It’s only afterward that you realize just how artful and purposeful this “casual” approach is, and how it pays extraordinary dividends in terms of verisimilitude.

Beginning today and running through May 11, the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque will be showcasing a program culled from Romania’s current cinematic boomlet. Several of the titles screening in the “Newest Wave” series (including “Stuff and Dough” and “Occident,” Puiu and Mungiu’s directorial debuts) are Ohio premieres.

One of the most entertaining and accessible of the never-before-seen-in-Cleveland movies is Catalin Mitulescu’s “The Way I Spent the End of the World” which views the last year of Ceausescu’s reign through the eyes of a 7-year-old boy who decides to assassinate the dictator after his teenage sister is sent to a reformatory for accidentally breaking a statue of Ceausescu.

Another local premiere is “California Dreamin’ [Endless],” the only feature by Cristian Nemescu, who died in a car accident while his film was in post-production. A dark comedy — helping to prove that Romanians do have a sense of humor despite their affinity for bleak subject matter — that won the Un Certain Regard honors at Cannes last year, “Endless” tells the incredible true-life story of a Romanian bureaucrat who hijacked a NATO train loaded with American military and weapons that was headed for Kosovo in the 1990s.

Whether the recent influx of interesting films and directors from Romania truly constitutes a “New Wave” or not remains a matter of conjecture. Whatever you choose to call it, there’s no disputing the fact that filmmakers such as Mungiu and Puiu are helping to shine an often brilliant, sometimes painful light on a previously unexamined part of the globe.

Attention must be paid.