by Digby Houghton
Worth: $12.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Berlinale
Cast:
Gabriel Spahiu, Eszter Tompa, Adonis Tanța
Intro:
... tiring and overbearing ...
With the rise of neoliberal governments since the 1970s, there has been a shift within the Global South and the Global North. In its wake, the developed world has attempted to monetise mundane tasks like food delivery, car sharing, cleaning and decluttering, creating a servant class. At the tips of our fingers, food can arrive at our front door, we can be driven anywhere in a matter of minutes and people can come and clean our homes. The gig economy relies upon a casualised workforce that is more often than not self-employed to avoid the responsibility of paying annual leave and sick leave.
This may not be the focal point of Romanian auteur Radu Jude’s new film Kontinental ’25, but the underlying precarity of the neoliberal world – and its role in post-socialist Romania – is certainly Jude’s central focus.
The film opens with the usual tongue-in-cheek irony we have come to know and love from Jude (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn). We are in the outskirts of Cluj, a city in northwestern Romania considered the historical capital of Transylvania – the contested home of Romanians and Hungarians. A rough-hewn looking man clad in black clothes and boots is seen stumbling through the sunshine of a park teeming with animatronic dinosaurs – occasionally their jaws clunkily open and they scream. His name is Ion, played with dynamism and a goofy nature, by Gabriel Spahiu. However, he exists on the perimeters, collecting and rummaging through trash to fill his tiny home. Ion strolls the streets of the city asking random people not just for money, but for work – he is desperate to work, and will do anything for a job. Ion’s poverty-stricken character juxtaposes with the radiating Romanian sunlight and the city’s broad boulevards, sparking the first of Jude’s reflections on class relations.
The film’s style is a mixture of Jude’s usual neo-realist antics with naturalistic lighting, a pared-back colour palette and jarring focus pulls that mirror those of television shows like The Office and Modern Family. Jude’s versatile direction utilises an Iphone without lighting or grip equipment, illustrating his innovative qualities as a director. This blend of naturalism and staged sequencing allows the audience to be drawn into and out of the film. No doubt, the underlying neo-realist style is also an homage to Roberto Rossellini’s aesthetic and whose 1952 film Europe ‘51, mimics the film both in its title and plot line – a woman consumed by guilt, searching for redemption.
One day, an overworked bailiff and mother, Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), arrives at Ion’s house asking him to relocate because of a redevelopment she is responsible for in the area. Without a great deal of alternatives, Ion resorts to taking his life with a set of wires clamped to a radiator heater, which transpires gruesomely off-screen. Orsolya suddenly must juggle her guilt for a crime she is, in fact, not guilty of. Following Orsolya across Cluj, Jude’s film becomes a meditation on the psychogeography of Transylvania (a contested Hungarian region for centuries); the legacy of Stalin and the Soviet Union in Romania, laden with anecdotal jokes that don’t quite land.
It’s not to say that Jude doesn’t succeed in his mission to elevate the most mundane politics or conversation topics into important character exposition, but after a while, it becomes tiring and overbearing, which stems from the language barrier and the nuance of the characters’ humour. At one stage, Orsolya, who was previously a professor in law, reconnects with an old student called Fred – played with an aloof sensibility by a lanky Adonis Tanța. Orsolya is exiting a car park when Fred stops her. He is dressed head to toe in a food delivery outfit and explains that he gave up on a career in law to pursue this job, although he still maintains immaculate Latin that he recounts to impress Orsolya. The two characters end up bonding and he provides Orsolya with a reprieve from the harrowing circumstances that she finds herself in.
Orsolya’s job involves relocating poor citizens to give way to high rise towers. Her low-tier position within a broader hierarchy means that she is as much a pawn as Fred, whose work as a delivery rider affords him the liberties of choosing when to work but without any workers’ security.
Jude has built up a language predicated upon long takes, deep focus and an unnerving realism that is recognisable enough for him to experiment with the medium further. We frequently see Orsolya driving her car from the cosy confines of the passenger seat – a possible homage to the ill-fated hero Angela Radacuni (Ilinca Manolache) of his previous film Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, who works as an underpaid production assistant. The suburban sprawl of Cluj is rendered in a poignant montage consisting of a sequence of static shots of cranes and the ensuing development sparking a similarity to Jean Luc-Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her – centred upon a female character coping with the conservatism of De Gaullist Paris in the 1960s and her malaise as a housewife.
Jude’s films are about the melancholy of the 21st century, politically, culturally and socially. His characters are often responding to situations as they go along and it’s up to the audience to interpret their behaviour how they want to. With the increasing casualisation of the workforce, more and more people are working precarious jobs for insane hours to satisfy the status quo of a servant class in the Global North. Jude tries to expose this chaos but doesn’t quite pull it off.
