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Recent Romanian Cinema: Is It a RealNew Wave or Just a Splash in the Water?Elena Roxana Popana

a Independent Scholar, Austin, Texas, USAPublished online: 23 Jul 2014.

To cite this article: Elena Roxana Popan (2014) Recent Romanian Cinema: Is It a Real NewWave or Just a Splash in the Water?, The Communication Review, 17:3, 217-232, DOI:10.1080/10714421.2014.930273

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The Communication Review, 17:217–232, 2014Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1071-4421 print/1547-7487 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10714421.2014.930273

Recent Romanian Cinema: Is It a Real NewWave or Just a Splash in the Water?

ELENA ROXANA POPANIndependent Scholar, Austin, Texas, USA

This article demonstrates that recent Romanian cinema manifeststhe features of a new, coherent, and strong film movement that wascorrectly tagged as a late new wave in the context of postcommunistsignificant changes that have shaped the Romanian society and itsartistic milieu over the past two decades. By discussing the generalcharacteristics of new waves and the legacies of the most influentialcinematic movements of the 20th century, several common featuresare highlighted, as is the Romanian directors’ capacity to integrateand restate these influences through innovative techniques and anoriginal approach to reality. The analysis is exemplified throughthe exploration of some of the most representative films of the recentRomanian cinema, prizewinners at prestigious international filmfestivals.

There is no doubt that, during the last decade, Romanian cinema madean impressive transition from a marginal cinema to a hot spot on the mapof world cinema, bringing to the public’s attention a consistent series offilms that received a wide range of praise from film critics and won veryimportant prizes at international film festivals. These realities suggest that theworld witnessed the birth of a cinematic phenomenon that has been labeledthe Romanian New Wave and characterized as neo-neorealism. Despite thefact that Romanian film directors and scholars deny the existence of sucha film current—arguing that we should not talk about any national artisticmovement, only about individuals (Serban, 2007)—several influential filmcritics claim that recent Romanian cinema is not simply an accident involvingsome talented people. The purpose of this article is to inquire whether recentRomanian cinema manifests the features of a new, strong, and coherent form

Address correspondence to Elena Roxana Popan, 3451 B Lake Austin Boulevard, Austin,TX, 78703, USA. E-mail: elena_popan@utexas.edu

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of expression or is merely an accumulation of fortunate happenings. Theoriginality of some representative works will be discussed in the contextof Italian neorealism’s and the French New Wave’s legacies but also in thebroader context of the distinct features associated with new waves.

After the fall of the communism, it was expected that an explosionof Romanian films commenting on or criticizing the turbulent Romanian pastwould materialize, but that wasn’t the case. According to Romanian film criticAlexandru Leo Serban (2010), Romanian cinema can be separated into twodistinctive moments: from 1990 to 2001, and from 2001 to present. Duringthe earliest years of liberated cinema, the few films that were producedwere strongly marked by deep resentment, anger, and a chaotic search forupdated forms of expression. It was not until later, during the second stage,that Romanian cinema found its voice, one that was “less shrill, less hystericalabout the state of things in Romanian society” (Seran, 2010, p. 3).

The long line of awards and international critics’ praise can be con-sidered the first sign of something “big” happening, suggesting that we arewitnessing the birth of a new, powerful cinematic movement that can beplaced under the spectrum of a new wave. In 2002, director Nae Caranfil’sPhilanthropy received the jury prize at the GoEast Festival in Wiesbaden,Germany, and Sinisa Dragin’s Every Day God Kisses Us on the Mouth took theTiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival in The Netherlands. However,the film that made the most significant early breakthrough for Romaniancinema was The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (directed by Cristi Puiu), whichwon Un Certain Regard Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005, followedby 28 additional festival prizes. In 2006, Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 Eastof Bucharest won the Camera d’Or for best first film, and Doroteea Petrepicked up the award for best female performance for her work in UnCertain Regard entry The Way I Spent the End of the World (directed byCatalin Mitulescu). A year later came Romania’s shining moment: directorCristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a sensitive drama aboutabortion in communist Romania, won the Palme d’Or at the 60th edition ofCannes. In addition, Romania picked up another award (Un Certain Regard)at Cannes for Cristian Nemescu’s California Dreamin’. Romanian cinemacontinued to be a strong and acclaimed presence in the years that followedwith Boogie (2008, directed by Radu Muntean), Corneliu Porumboiu’s Police,Adjective (2009, Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section), Tales from theGolden Age (2009, directed by Cristian Mungiu), Tuesday after Christmas(2010, directed by Radu Muntean), and Aurora (2010, directed by CristiPuiu). In 2012, Cristian Mungiu released another challenging work that wasat once well received and hotly debated. His film Beyond the Hills wonthe award for Best Screenplay at Cannes, and its two leads shared the BestActress Award. The following year, it was Calin Peter Netzer’s turn to enterinto the spotlight with his film Child’s Pose, which won the Golden Bearat the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival. Closely related to these films

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that are considered to belong to the Romanian New Wave are several otherworks such as Hooked (2008, directed by Adrian Sitaru), The Happiest Girl inThe World (2009, directed by Radu Jude), Medal of Honor (2009, directed byCalin Peter Netzer), If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (2010, directed by FlorinSerban), Morgen (2010, directed by Marian Crisan), and Best Intentions (2011,directed by Adrian Sitaru).

The question as to whether or not such offerings actually represent a“new wave” has been intensely debated over the past few years, both amongRomanian and foreign film critics who have tried to identify common featuresor a common “grammar” of this type of cinema (Pop, 2010). As the years goby and the prizes continue to come to Romania, it becomes easier to see theoutlines of a possible late new wave movement.

WHAT IS A NEW WAVE, AND WHEN AND WHY DOES IT RISE?

In order to construct meaningful arguments on the topic of whether or notRomanian cinema belongs to the elite family of noteworthy new waves, itis necessary to first establish the key features of a new wave in cinema.The basic definitions assert that new waves are any of various new move-ments in cinema, especially those led by a group of experimental filmmakers,that consciously break with traditional ideas (American Heritage Dictionaryof the English Language, 2014; Collins English Dictionary: Complete andUnabridged, 2003).

The term itself suggests something powerful and different from earliercinema, but what are its common features? According to Martin Sean (2013),most new waves adhere to certain ground rules: They are united by newtechnology and a shared ideology, are working under politically auspiciousconditions, have access to new sources of funding, and frequently bene-fit from new opportunities for exhibition or distribution. A common featurethat unites all new wave filmmakers is, in his assessment, an ethical con-viction that self-expression is necessary for cinema and its audiences. Suchexpression takes many forms, but it stems from the desire to give a voice tothose who cannot speak—for cultural or political reasons—or whose livesare not represented on the screen. Also, central ingredients are the acts ofprovoking, questioning, and celebrating. New wave cinema, Sean explains,is a cinema “that experiments with new forms of storytelling; that wants tobe a trickster; that wants us to look again at the world” (2013, p. 10).

In Birger Langkaer’s (2002) view, new waves bring a fresh approachto their stories as well as new cinematic techniques, such as lightweightcameras, sound equipment, and more light-sensitive film stocks. They alsoalign fiction films with new modes of documentary films and their claims toreality, utilizing loose narrative structures and open endings.

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Discussing the new wave cinema and the prototypes of realism in film,Ib Bondenbjerg (2000) identifies several characteristics that contrast withthe realism of classical cinema. According to him, new wave cinema isphenomenological, open, reality-driven, and focused on story–character (asopposed to story–action). Being episodic and static, it has a weak story worldand is oriented toward the simulation of the everyday, offering to the viewera slice of life rather than a goal that the characters must achieve. In termsof style, new wave offerings typically feature an observational style, onethat is totally distinct from the functional narrative style of classical cinema.In addition, strong referentiality, documentary and avant-garde features, useof contrast and poetic elements, the presence of historical and social themes,metafiction, expressive symbolic montage, and genre hybridization are someof the other important traits that define a new wave style (Bondebjerg, 2000).

In Andras Kovacs’ (2008) view, there are two basic principles to whichnew waves and modernism relate: the homogeneity of style and the onto-logical approach to reality, both closely related to the central role attributedto the “auteur.” The homogeneity of style is achieved through minimalismand the use of a reduced number of basic stylistic elements, thus being thesource of the well-known modern austerity, while the “objective reality” iscreated by using a set of decorative elements with reference to a traditionalcultural background that restricts their interpretation.

In my opinion, one can build a strong argument in favor of the appear-ance of a new “new wave” by analyzing the way that it relates to the mostinfluential cinematic movements of the 20th century: Italian neorealism andthe French New Wave. Although distinct, the latter movement was consis-tently influenced by neorealism at its turn, and both echo to various degreespractically every original cinematic work that cinema produced in the secondhalf of the 20th century. It is not my intention to claim that neorealism is aprecondition of a new wave’s birth; however, it is nevertheless obvious thatseveral features constituting the core of neorealism have successfully beenapplied to subsequent new waves.

The first definitive characteristic is that all new movements manifestedinitially as a reaction to something: an actuality, a cinematic tradition, a prob-lem that occurred in society, a political vision, etc. It can also be argued thatit was the Second World War that created a breach in the perception of cin-ema. Although the desire to experiment and challenge the existing forms ofexpression is present from the beginning of cinema, the preoccupation withrough realism, pioneered by Russian filmmakers (and most notably SergeiEisenstein), manifested to its full extent only later, after the war ended andthe world found itself profoundly changed and in crisis. Although there isno definitive source for the term neorealism, it first appeared in the early1940s in the writings of Italian critics and represented a younger generation’sdesire to break free of the conventions of ordinary Italian cinema. UnderMussolini, the motion picture industry had created colossal historical epics

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and sentimental upper-class melodramas, but many critics found these tobe artificial and decadent. The moment for a “new realism” had arrived, andthis moment changed everything. The late 1950s and early 1960s saw the riseof a new generation of filmmakers around the world. The rise of the newwave in Iran was due, at least in part, to the intellectual and political move-ments of the time. A romantic climate was developing after the 1953 coup inthe sphere of arts. Alongside this, a socially committed literature took shapein the 1950s and reached its peak in the 1960s, which many consider thegolden era of contemporary Persian literature (Talebinejad, 1995). Althoughnever a formally organized movement, the French New Wave directors werelinked by their self-conscious rejection of the previous literary period’s piecesbeing made in France and their intention of experimenting with film form.Many also engaged socially and politically in their work, making their radicalexperiments with editing, visual style, and narrative part of a general breakwith the conservative paradigm (Bordwell & Thompson, 1997). In the late1950s, a number of socially conscious films reflecting the spirit of the “thaw”in politics were made in Russia and Eastern Europe. The thaw partially lib-erated the directors’ agenda from the propagandistic strictness of socialistrealism and revived the cinema of the region: comedies could be made onceagain, and films could turn the hero back into an individual human being,placing humanist values before ideological ones (Beumers, 2009). In thisclimate of the 1960s, the region experienced a “new wave” of filmmaking,encouraged by reform-oriented domestic political developments and influ-enced by Western experimentation with narrative and style (Cook, 2004). Themost prominent examples from this era include the Czech New Wave andthe Yugoslav Black Wave, which are both very closely related. In the westernpart of Europe, the “kitchen sink realism” of the British New Wave manifestedas a reaction to romanticism. The young directors of the German New Wavewere strongly political; in the beginning, they constantly rejected financialsupport of the existent film industry, often preferring funds provided by tele-vision and consequently gaining less popularity. Later, New German Cinemabecame more accessible and achieved recognition through films that com-bined elements of Italian neorealism, the French New Wave, and “kitchensink realism” with references to well-established genres of Hollywood cin-ema. In another part of the world, the Brazilian New Wave (or CinemaNovo)— formed in response to class and racial unrest both in Latin Americaand the United States—emerged as a cinematic movement that emphasizedsocial equality and intellectualism and rose to prominence in Latin Americaduring the 1960s and 1970s. Influenced by Italian neorealism and the FrenchNew Wave, films produced under the ideology of Cinema Novo opposed tra-ditional Brazilian cinema, which consisted primarily of musicals, comedies,and Hollywood-style epics (Johnson & Stam, 1995). Scandinavia gave to cin-ema one of the most interesting movements of the 20th century: Dogme 95 isa moment when the new waves’ period of glory seemed to fade away. This

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movement brought a fresh approach to the auteur cinema and camera tech-niques. It also sparked an interest in unknown filmmakers by suggesting thatone can make a quality film to gain recognition, without being dependenton commissions or huge budgets (Langkjaer, 2002).

Similar in essence to all of these new waves’ triggers is the conjunc-ture that favored the new Romanian cinema. If the Italian neorealism wasa reaction to fascism, we might say that present-day Romanian cinema is areaction to communism. In the postrevolutionary years, like most of Easternand Central Europe, Romania has passed from euphoric joy via economiccrisis to a more or less comfortable relationship with capitalism. Perhapsinevitably, the events of 1989 still dominate the films that are being made—or, more accurately, the films that are being exported—which may say moreabout festival selectors and art-house distributors than about Romania itself(Roddnick, 2007). The Romanian public displays different tastes, but theincentive that shapes modern Romanian cinema is a total break with the past.Under Nicolae Ceausescu, like all Eastern-bloc countries, Romania had a statefilm studio within which films were made for local audiences and rarelyscreened, even at the annual Soviet-bloc showcases in Moscow and KarlovyVary. Nevertheless, there was a huge gap between the way people reallylived and the things that were presented on the screen. In a 2013 interviewwith the American film critic Ella Veres, Marian Crisan, director of Morgen(2010), declared:

The fact that we lived, our generation, under two such different timeperiods created a kind of cultural background for us, but what is nottalked about much is that all artists, not just film directors, were fedup with communist art-making, and they wanted to make somethingdifferent, and that’s what they did, painters, and theater directors, andfilm directors. And it reached a point when things could not go the sameway, making the same kind of movies for 20, 30 years. That’s it. Enough.[There] always comes a ground zero moment. And these new kind offilms started to appear. (Veres, 2013, para. 12)

In an article published in 2010, Doru Pop affirms that it is Romania’sadherence to the European Union and the European cinematic vision thatfundamentally makes the new Romanian cinema a European new wave,“one that partakes in the invention of the ‘new Europe’ with cinematicmechanisms” (p. 25). In addition, he asserts that any European new wave isshaped by the rejection of American influence and the necessity of creating aEuropean identity by opposing “popular” to “culture.” Although the access toa new market of distribution, a larger public, and new collaborative methodsand funds has a strong relevance and influence in the process of filmmakingand can easily be linked to the development of a new wave, I maintain thatthis affirmation cannot be considered an explanation per se. It is the desireof a group of directors to make a break with the past and transform film

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in an experience of contemporary sensibilities that gave birth to all knownnew waves, whether European or not. Cinema Novo and the Iranian NewWave were influenced by European new wave aesthetics, but both owe theirmasterpieces to the overwhelming need to find a voice of their own, not toa premeditated intention to promote a regional cinema. Notably, this wasalso the case for the American new wave, which was strongly influenced bythe French New Wave but yet profoundly distinct. Furthermore, the desireto innovate does not imply a lack of admiration for the cinema’s classics oran obsessive intention to confront Americanism in film. The new wave filmsrepresent a reaction to commercial films that create golden images and nar-ratives following popular recipes, and the American cinema is the first onethat comes to mind in this regard, but the spectrum is much larger. Realismand narrative structure are not opposing elements and form and style aloneare not the only elements in defining realism, suggests Ib Bondebjerg (2000),and new wave films owe a lot even to American narratives and directors.

COMMITMENT TO REALISM, OR THE CALL OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Stepping from causes to effects, it might be said that any new cinematicmovement’s purpose is to impose its own vision of reality and the resultantworks can be analyzed through their commitment to realism. Spurred byboth foreign influences and indigenous traditions, the postwar Italian periodsaw several filmmakers beginning to work with the goal of revealing contem-porary social conditions. Neorealism created a distinctive approach to filmstyle: mise-en-scene relied on actual locations, and its photographic worktended toward the roughness of documentaries. Shooting on the streets andin private buildings made Italian camera operators adept at a cinematographythat often avoided the classic “three-point lighting system” of Hollywood.Although neorealist films frequently featured famous stage or film actors,they also made regular use of nonactors, recruited for their realistic looks orbehaviors. The Italian cinema had a long tradition of dubbing, and the abilityto postsynchronize dialogue permitted the filmmakers to work on locationwith smaller crews and to move the camera freely. Even more influentialwas the neorealist sense of narrative form. Early major films of the move-ment contain relatively conventionally organized plots, but the tendency wasto loosen up narrative relations and to permit the intrusion of noncausallymotivated details. Although the causes of characters’ actions are usuallyseen as concretely economic and political (e.g., poverty, unemployment,exploitation), the effects are often fragmentary and inconclusive. The ambi-guity of neorealist films is also a product of narration that refuses to yield anomniscient knowledge of events, testifying that reality is too complex to deci-pher entirely (Bordwell & Thompson, 1997). Neorealism’s tendency toward aslice-of-life plot construction correlated with the rejection of happy endings,

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giving many films of the movement an open-ended quality in contrast to thenarrative closure of Hollywood cinema; this quality will later become a markof new wave films and an irrefutable condition of the realistic valences ofthe films.

In a similar way, this view of realism constitutes the essence of contem-porary Romanian cinema. Its foundation is represented by the constructiveexploitation of the relation between film, history, and memory, intended toshow how the fall of communism and the transition that followed have beenexperienced and assumed by the Romanian society (Ieta, 2010). The direc-tors’ attempts to recuperate the realism of communist times, as opposed tothe artificiality of socialist realism, are also readily evident. Consequently,the most common themes of these films—the communist past haunting thepresent, and the current state of social problems without visible solutions—are marks of a deeper need for understanding the past in order to heal thewounds and correct the present.

But is this new breed of Romanian cinema simply neorealism revisited,or does it have, as any respected distinct movement, particular features thatcan be regarded as stylistic innovation? Critics from all over the world havenoted in recent Romanian films a great deal of vigor and a large dose of hon-esty that brings “new blood” to world cinema, as well as a consistent desireto engage with alternative views as far as the communist past is concerned.In addition, the works seem to be related by a common passion for filmin general and for the reflexive “apparatus” in particular, being constantlyready to flush out presence and asking questions more so than answeringthem (Andrews, 2008, pp. 6–8). Aesthetically, these films have been taggedas neo-neorealism, the term implying that Italian neorealism had a stronginfluence upon them but that it has been taken to a different level. The useof a few simple elements in order to create maximum effect, together withdistinctive uses of lighting and music, were considered original characteris-tics of the movement, and, according to A. O. Scott (2008), the excitementthat greeted it came from the feeling that one of the oldest and strongestcapacities of cinema—to capture and illuminate reality, one face, one room,one life at a time—had been renewed.

The respected Romanian film critic Alex Leo Serban (2010) rejects theterm neo-neorealism, which he finds to be artificial and confusing becauseRomania never had a neorealist period in cinema, contemporaneous or not toItalian neorealism. He appreciates that neorealism is the best-suited aesthetictag for the New Romanian cinema because both cinematic movements areeconomical in their means of expression and contain an “ethic germ” gener-ated by the moral pressure to feel the reality’s pulse and to engage with it.Minimalism results as a natural consequence of this economical perspectiveover reality and is exploited as its very best, creating a strong impact uponthe viewer. Most stories are highly authentic and provide scrutiny of ordinaryhuman beings caught in the web of different social habits that dominate their

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daily lives. The plots are always limited, and typically the postcommunistindividual is clearly favored over the collective. Actions are often placed atthe margins, either at the periphery of a big city or inside provincial com-munities. In terms of style, however, they are influenced not only by Italianneorealism. Their naturalistic surface aims to portray the contrasting realitiesof rough capitalism, but this is often permeated by absurdist, ironic, andeven surrealist elements in the finest Romanian literary and theatrical vein.

There is yet another attribute common to many new waves that deservessome attention here. It pertains to the constraint sometimes experiencedby national cinemas to face and adapt to periods of economic crisis, areality that often motivates the more creative directors to find original, cost-effective solutions. In this regard, it is fitting to recall the way that RobertoRossellini made Rome, Open City (1945), the film that kicked off the neo-realist trend. He filmed secretly between 1943 and 1945, scraping togetherfunds from various sources. At one point, without any money left, Rosselliniand Anna Magnani sold their clothes to obtain enough lire to carry on fora few more days. Production conditions were incredibly primitive. Studioswere not available to them, and nearly all of the scenes were enacted onthe actual locations they represent in the film. Even the electrical power inwartime was so erratic that maintaining constant exposure was problematic(Ellis & Wexman, 2002). This is, of course, an extreme example that doesnot offer an intrinsic explanation for an original cinematic approach, but itnevertheless contributes another perspective on what motivates the begin-ning of some new movements. As interviewer Ella Veres noted during her2013 conversation with the Romanian director Marian Crisan:

Now the trend is to make realistic cinema, minimalist, also because thesmall budgets don’t allow a thorough approach in terms of filming onthe set, scenery, costumes, special effects, etc. That takes us to a kindof realistic and contemporary storytelling. Because now you’re able toproduce only that! (Veres, 2013, para. 11)

STYLE AND INNOVATION IN REPRESENTATIVE RECENTROMANIAN FILMS

Let us consider the example of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005, directedby Cristi Puiu), about whose thematic virtues a good deal of literature hasbeen produced. More than two and a half hours long, The Death of Mr.Lazarescu chronicles the last night in the life of its title character, a 63-year-old Bucharest pensioner with a stomachache and a drinking problem. It isthe film that established the style for much of what was to follow over thenext few years: meticulous attention to detail delivered through very longtakes and an often static camera that simply records what is in front of it.

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Such attention to detail extends to performance and dialogue as well, both ofwhich are so strikingly naturalistic that some of the scenes could be mistakenfor documentary (Roddnick, 2007). The starting point for the film was a realcase Puiu read about in a newspaper: Around the year 2000, an ambulancebrought a sick old man to six overcrowded hospitals, all of which turnedhim away. As there was nobody at his residence, he was literally left onthe street with an IV drip administered by a nurse. He eventually died andthe nurse received a jail sentence. The film’s highly realistic qualities con-firm Puiu’s precise directing and permanent focus on the extremely complexnature of human beings when confronted with solitude, suffering, pain, andillness.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is not necessarily a very original work,being strongly reminiscent of minimalist techniques already present in LucianPintilie’s Niki and Flo (2003), based on a script co-written by the same CristiPuiu and Razvan Radulescu. Slowly paced, ironic, and woeful, Niki and Flotells the story of Niki, a retired colonel nostalgic for communism, who isgrieving his son’s death and his daughter’s future departure to the UnitedStates, and Florian (known as Flo), his in-law (i.e., father of Niki’s daugh-ter’s husband), a prototype of the unscrupulous postcommunist “nouveauriche.” Situated at opposite extremes, both Niki and Flo enact the drama ofmodern Romanian society and its moral struggles, oscillating between pastand present models. Niki is outraged by Flo’s cupidity and insensitivity, towhich he constantly falls victim, and he feels that it is his duty to reinstatemoral order; therefore, he decides to kill Flo in the most gruesome way.The minimalist script of Niki and Flo, its distinctive acting techniques, andalso the long shots and attention to detail it contains fully anticipate whatwill happen in The Death of Mr. Lazarescu two years later. Lateral framing oftableau-like compositions, minute scrutiny of everyday conditions, the pres-ence of nonspectacular details, a consistent refusal to use any score (withthe exception of some added musical quotations within the opening andclosing credits), recurrent use of long shots, and a constant challenging ofaudience emotional participation all are similar to documentary style. Theacting performances favoring underplaying (rather than the almost hyster-ical, aggressive overplaying that has characterized most Romanian films inthe past) are another part of minimalist aesthetics (Nasta, 2013), and theresult is cinematic humanism in its purest form. Upon being interviewed,Puiu explained:

I’m tired of the old forms of storytelling . . . of the traditional narrative,where we don’t know what happens next. So I’ve tried with this filmto move the accent from what’s going to happen to how it’s going tohappen. Then the audience stops wondering where the story is leadingand is forced instead to face the fact of what’s on-screen. (Gilbey, 2006,p. 28)

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Radu Muntean’s Tuesday after Christmas (2010) is an elegant and emo-tionally resonant drama about a middle-class couple whose 10-year marriageis menaced by the husband’s affair with their daughter’s dentist. In manyrespects, it is an oft-told tale: Paul must choose between the stability ofhis family life and the uncertainty and excitement of a relationship with ayounger woman. The economical, minimalist style is subtle, consisting of afew dozen shots with the camera moving slightly, without anything essen-tial missing. It feels deliberately like a voyeuristic intrusion into the intimacyof the characters. Ordinary scenes are played out with attention to detail,sensitivity, and irony (Nasta, 2013). The film’s climactic showdown feelswonderfully restrained and it is absorbing and authentic, with filmmakingthat is delicately stylized but never distracting (Zeitchik, 2010), and the factthat the two leads are actually a married couple adds to the verisimilitude.

A similar approach—albeit with significant satirical inflections—can befound in Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006), a film thatfocuses on the Romanian Revolution as seen through the distorted filter ofmemory. The anniversary of the 1989 revolution in a provincial town servesas an excuse to have a television debate that involves three characters (analcoholic school teacher, an amateur journalist, and a character who used toplay Santa Claus) who are vaguely portrayed, and the film goes beyond theinterrogation in the Romanian title version (Was There or Was There Not [aRomanian Revolution]?) and its possible answers. Porumboiu’s film is a bitmore traditional in style, yet it distinguishes itself through the Balkan humorin general, and Romanian humor in particular (Roddnick, 2007), as well asthrough the director’s ability to create a comedy from a series of dull events,an intelligent use of dialogue, and ingenious communication between itscharacters (Istudor, 2008).

The closest film to a historical overview of Romanian society in theaftermath of the fall of Ceausescu is Cristian Nemescu’s California Dreamin’(2007), a movie of epic ambition. Based on an actual occurrence, the filmtells the story of a trainload of U.S. Marines held up at a country stationbecause of bureaucratic issues and an obstinate stationmaster. It begins as adeceptively familiar Balkan comedy (raunchy, ridiculous, with colorful char-acters similar to those found in some of Emir Kusturica’s films) but thennarrows into a tragedy that manages to reference not only modern Romaniabut also the aftermath of World War II and the vision that comes with theUnited States’ “war on terror.” Nemescu used the story to construct a sinuousplot, alternating between narratives from 1999 and the 1944 bombardments,and, driven by the desire to tackle history in a cynical manner, he focused onsome of the clichés that are coming from Romania’s historical past up to thepresent (e.g., the wait for the Americans to come and save the Romaniansfrom the Soviet alternative; Istudor, 2008). Despite its various shortcomings(e.g., unpolished scenes and acting, unclear plot elements, etc.) that aremost likely due to the director’s death in a car accident before the film

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was finished, California Dreamin’ was very well received and considereda peak of the Romanian New Wave (Roddnick, 2007), leading to CristianNemescu’s identification as the single “magical neorealist director” of therecent Romanian cinema (Serban, 2009, p. 144).

Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), the firstRomanian Palme d’Or winner, confirmed the triumph of the minimalist modelin terms of acting, cinematography, editing, and highly original soundscape.Often mistakenly interpreted as a film about an abortion decision (Serban,2009), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days instead highlights one of the mostcontroversial aspects of the Ceausescu regime: the prohibition of abortionand its tragic consequences on countless destinies. Otilia and Gabita are twofemale friends and students, roommates in a university dormitory, who tryto arrange an illegal abortion and face a dangerous and humiliating situ-ation. Otilia rents a cheap hotel room where they meet Mr. Bebe, a fakedoctor willing to perform the abortion; adding another burden to the alreadycomplicated situation, Mr. Bebe refuses to take their money and asks for adifferent kind of favor. In an extremely rough style, Cristian Mungiu accu-rately describes the terror of everyday life during the final days of one ofthe most oppressive dictatorships in Eastern Europe. This film belongs toa larger project titled Tales from the Golden Age, intended to be a subjec-tive history of communism in Romania told through its urban legends. Theproject, as its press materials reveal, aimed to talk about that period withno direct reference to communism but rather only through different storiesfocused on personal options in a time of misfortunes when people had tolive like normal times (Cannes, 2007). In terms of style and in the line ofhis predecessors, the director overtly sticks to the minimalistic trend: static,frontally framed long shots, frequent use of handheld camera shooting, noprecomposed score, and underplayed acting. Mungiu attributes this aestheticto his way of working and his approach to the subject: he tries to keep thingssimple and honest, he doesn’t take advantage of his position as the director,and, above all else, he avoids being spectacular. As he explains, his intentionis to emphasize two particular aspects in his films:

The first is that I only shoot locations, so I get a glimpse of the life that’salready present. And the second comes from focusing on details. I likeworking with objects and with the depth of field. I start by setting theaction, the actors, as in a theatre, to see what’s the most concise wayof getting the action staged. Then I take the camera and rehearse a fewtimes until everybody knows what happens. Then I shoot. (Roddnick,2007, para. 11)

However, as with Italian neorealism, the big question becomes: Howdo you maintain audience focus when you create a film that doesn’t showmuch? One possible answer is that you have to create tension, and a provenway to do this is by subverting the ending in order to increase the tension by

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not releasing it. Another film helmed by Mungiu that clearly illustrates thispoint (and was intensely debated) is 2012’s Beyond the Hills. The first thingthat amazed the cinematic world was to have two lead actresses (CosminaStratan and Cristina Flutur) who had never acted in a movie before face thecameras and do such a convincing job that they both walked away with theprestigious Best Actress Award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Inspired bya nonfiction novel by Tatiana Niculescu Bran, the film tells the story of thefriendship between two young women, Voichita and Alina, who grew up inthe same orphanage. After spending several years in Germany, Alina wantsto take Voichita with her, but the latter finds refuge and a family in an isolatedOrthodox monastery and refuses to leave. Disappointed and enraged, Alinaconstantly challenges the nuns and the priest, who comes to the conclusionthat she is possessed by the devil and decides to exorcise her. In the end,Voichita doubts her religious choice and decides to free Alina, but she is toolate: Alina dies in the aftermath of the exorcism. The film impressed audiencemembers and critics with its power to, just as its title suggests, enable theviewer to look at options beyond the conventional barriers that obstructsone’s vision and by presenting the story with a remarkable detachment.Also, this film offered a fascinating and seemingly “abrupt” ending—it is cutwhile the nuns and the priest are on their way to the police station in orderto be investigated for Alina’s death—to a rather long film without externalmusic, and, in this regard, the unusual final sequences contributed to thework’s inherent strength. For this director, being objective or precise with“the message” of a film is just an illusion and it should not be the filmmaker’sconcern. In a 2013 interview with Costica Bradatan, Mungiu emphasized thispoint by stating that films can depict attitudes, characters, and situations, butthey cannot interpret:

In Beyond the Hills things are as clear—or as unclear—as life itself. WhatI refuse is to interpret facts for the audience. In real life they have todo this interpretation for themselves, and I think it should be the samewith cinema. I offer viewers the story with as many relevant details aspossible. Yet, in the end, any interpretation is a mix of what you’ve seenand what you are prepared to understand. I have no intention to makethe audience feel ambiguous about what happens in the story, but in lifewe don’t have just good characters and bad characters. (Bradatan, 2013,para. 4)

WHAT STANDS AGAINST THE EXISTENCEOF A ROMANIAN NEW WAVE?

The major argument that opposes the existence of a Romanian New Waveis the attitude of Romanian directors who have repeatedly and vehemently

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denied the existence of a coherent movement in present-day cinema. Theydo not have a feeling of belonging to a shared artistic stream and they do notwant to be associated with it. At best, they declare themselves to be membersof the same generation, with a similar baggage of collective memories andcultural references.

Cristian Mungiu, for example, denies that there is a common “style” thatcharacterizes the Romanian New Wave. “We don’t share the same values andwe don’t belong to the same school of cinema,” he insists. “I think there’s alot of diversity in the way we understand films, though there are some thingswe have in common: the way of shooting, the humor, the attention we givethe actors” (Roddnick, 2007, para. 12). He considers himself as belonging to“a generation of people now turning 40, who have gained the distance to talkfreely and with less emotion about what happened to them when they wereyoung” (Roddnick, 2007, para. 12). For Cristi Puiu, the Romanian New Waveis “piggybacking” on the French New Wave (Pop, 2010, p. 21) and is a terminvented for the use of Western media: “The old wave was a happy accidentas we are today happy accidents,” he explained in a 2006 interview (Pop,2014, p. 31). Such declarations are not isolated, and they have repeatedlybeen brought to the public’s attention over the past decade. In addition,the Romanian cinematic movement does not have a manifesto, as to dateno director, film critic, or theoretician has promulgated any official aestheticdeclaration. Furthermore, there is no Romanian film school that can claima stylistic or ideological patronage, and some of the Romanian directorsfollowed a different trajectory without even graduating from the Universityof Drama and Cinematography.

Nevertheless, a dilemma presents itself: Is there any link to be madewith previous Romanian filmmakers and trends, or do most of the recentfilms possess an appeal precisely because they break from the past? Severalinterviews published in specialized media or on the occasion of internationalfilm festivals have revealed the extent to which filmmakers such as Mungiuor Porumboiu wanted to find new ways of making films and telling a story.They appear to have clearly benefited from the heritage of role models suchas the Romanian director Lucian Pintilie (active since the 1960s) and of assist-ing foreign directors such as Bertrand Tavernier and Costa-Gavras, who shotfilms on location in Romania (Martinez, 2007). They also mentioned the nat-ural influence exerted on them by famous world cinema auteurs as diverseas Federico Fellini, Milos Forman, Aki Kaurismäki, Krzysztof Kieslowski, andBilly Wilder. The fact that they were film buffs at different stages of their het-erogeneous training somehow helped to create a common denominator fortheir subsequent evolution. Once their films are subjected to close scrutiny, itbecomes easier to discern some kind of a pattern, midway between what onemay describe as postmodern pastiche and neo-modern minimalism (Nasta,2013). In response to this, it can be argued that although they benefited froma revolutionary manifesto, several Italian directors (including Vittorio De

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Sica) have also earlier maintained that they did not premeditate neorealism(Cardullo, 2002).

CONCLUSION

Although the opinions pertaining to the existence of a Romanian New Wavemay vary, if one considers all of the characteristics identified herein as unify-ing different movements in the neorealist tradition and applies the resultingrecipe to recent Romanian cinema, the conclusion becomes in my opin-ion self-evident: We do have a Romanian New Wave. Romanian cinemarecently became the new rising star of European cinema, but it is question-able whether the Romanian audiences shared the same appreciative opinion.The so-called “truth-loving films” were meant to be therapeutic, but it turnedout that Romanians do not want to see their communist past or its ghosts onthe screen; on the contrary, “they would rather see any other past relived onthe big screen, in epic movies. Nor are they keen to be sucked back into theirpresent—unless that present is trouble-proof and dirt-free” (Serban, 2010,p. 3). Still, having only 38 movie theaters in the entire country and almost noaudience, Romanian cinema seems to thrive primarily in the rarefied envi-ronments of international film festivals, and, like Iran’s cinema (Kaceanov,2008), to be almost totally ignored at home.

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