There are a number of unique and memorable lines in Romanian filmmakers Jew’s work Characteristic stinging “continental ’25”, but the most trenchant of them all is used by Bertolt Brecht: “The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die.” Cynically with reference to the Trotskyists accused in the show attempts that Stalin staged in Moscow as part of the great cleansing, Brecht’s comment is still discussed because its degree of sincerity is so difficult to analyze.
Jew’s own provocations (including “Unhappy banging or loonyporr“And” don’t expect too much from the end of the world “) tends to carry their heart on the sleeve more than most public figures could at the height of the Soviet Union, but their side -eyed profiles of today’s social illnesses are in the same way caustic and Cagey at once. Jew’s sympathy is as generous as his argument is condemning, and friction created between these forces has led to some of the only new comedies that feel as complex and absurd as real life has become.
His latest film is another of them.
Shot on one iPhone With the same crew that Jew had already gathered for its upcoming epic about the Dracula myth, “Continental ’25”, of course, feels like the scary and Scabrous B side for a larger project on transylvanic self-identity. Its moral dimensions are more simple than those in Jude’s previous works (and its form much simpler in nature), but only because their practical applications are so much knots in return. Where “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” and “don’t expect too much from the end of the world” scaled the personal destruction of their characters against spreading backgrounds of systemic abuse, the much more intimate – and less outrageous – “continental ’25” filtering the perversity of neoliberalism through The eyes of a well -meaning woman’s attempt to do the right thing. Unfortunately, a bold act of kindness can be a terrible cross to carry in a culture maintained by surrounding atrocities.
The woman’s name is Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), and she is a middle-aged, upper middle class that was born in Hungary before moving to the rapidly gentle Romanian city of Cluj or at least to a hilly suburb on the edge of the city, where she lives with her husband and Their two children in the type of house that probably priced out the local population and paved over generations of personal history. Consciously or not have Orsolya played an active role in such city growth; Her job is to remove people from the parties that have been gabbed up by the government and/or greedy real estate developers who want to turn them into apartments, chain shops and luxury hotels. It is a job that she tries to perform humanly, although a cynic can say that she only does it to live with the fact that the job itself is inhuman.
Orsolya’s ability to split – soon tested as never before – is reflected in the branched structure of the movie that Jew builds around her, which begins with a completely different character that will wish he had never crossed roads with the true protagonist of this history. Orsolya actually only comes into the picture after we spent 15 minutes or so after the homeless man (Gabriel Spahiu) who lives in the boiler room in the film’s title address, an old apartment building that will be renovated to a luxury hotel.
A little spitle shy by Denis Lavants Monsieur Merde but similarly hostile to the modern world, the man mutters through a cluj – “Oh fuck. Bloody fuck. Fucking shit” – so hopelessly commercialized that the streets are filled with robot dogs and the hiking trails in City Hills is full of animatronic dinosaurs. The sudden appearance of a velocity The foreground of Jew’s documentary -like images triggers the first good Chuckle in a movie that originates most of its humor from temporary details and real reference points, a tendency that is best encapsulated by a character’s funny backhanded mention of a newly published hit.
When Orsolya knocks on the man’s door with an army of trigger-happy cops on the back, the bailiff-in goes his infinite mercy-to give the guy some time to gather his possessions. When she and the police return a few minutes later, they discover that the man has left the premises on his terms. It is to say that he mortally interrupted his throat by hanging himself from the cooler with a little rusty chicken wire.
From that moment, this story belongs properly to Orsolya, which is so shaken by her involvement in human suicide to – horror of terror – she can not stomach the thought of going with her husband and their children on a family trip to Greece (Jude does not say How Romanians feel about the country’s Hungarian minority, but we note that Orsolya is something of an outsider, while the homeless man once was the pride in his country to compete in Balkan game). Instead, she stays behind her to think about her sins and find someone who might make their soul easily. Her boss. A friend. A former student. Even a priest. Orsolya has no shortage of people to turn to, the only problem is that none of them crap.
Jude credits the sudden focus shift to a relocation of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, but his own work is so flexible and inclined to change the form that the sudden pivot to Orsolya does not require additional quotes. Then again, all In the characteristic hyperlite “continental ’25” formed by influence and allusion, which in itself points back to Jew’s individual preference for breaking film history through the prism of modern life. The film itself is essentially just a big riff on Roberto Rossellini’s “Europe ’51”, another Hyper-Topic story about a debt law’s search for peace.
To that point, Jude credits its choice of consumer class as a tribute to Rossellini’s “poverty of funds”, and although I longed for the 16 mm wealth of “don’t expect too much …”, the flat digital impact he achieves with a Iphone here proves a suitable complement to a dry comedy that is so busy with the banality of neoliberal ethics. Where that movie saved a scintilla of monochrome romance from the sadness of the gigs, this one is determined to lose the joy of making good money at someone else’s expense.
The Deadpan -Ball comes from Orsolya’s meaningless search for a shaft to cry on. She wants someone to tell her she is a good person, but the choir with voices that she hears from is so worrying on her side that she – or at least we – Can’t help but question what to be a good person would even mean in this context. Her boss’s reaction is to mock Orsolya’s guilt and ridicule her self -image as Oskar Schindler in their office. Her friend responds with her own story about dealing with a homeless man before shrugging her shoulders for a problem that she is powerless to solve on her own.
Separated by interstitial images of Cluj’s ahistoric new architecture, these long and static confessional scenes are pointed with Jew’s recognizable murder, their dialogue fast enough to distract from the feeling of shooting fish in a barrel. “Continental ’25” is the first scripted feature i’ve see that names and responds to the Palestinian genocide, if only in the context of how Orsolya’s financial support for the people of gaza and ukraine (Two euros a month to each! Her participation in the pain of Romania’s own citizens. Her heart is in the right place, but what does it do for someone except herself?
It is only during the film’s later scenes, when Orsolya’s moral dilemma is spread into some of her other flaws and the fact that her powerlessness is uninterrupted to reveal the mess it leaves behind, that “continental ’25” can bloom to something a little more bite And steadfast. Jude tends to be on its impish best when his films adopt a more explicitly meta-textual bent, and therefore the director’s fans should know that when Orsolya meets a former student by her-a young man obsessed by Zen Koans and Ice-T -i en Bar with movie theme is pasted a poster for “We live in time” on the wall behind them.
Things never approach gonzo -debouchery of Jews more funny comedies (the most shocking moments here are almost Completely limited to things of wild conversations), but it is certain to say that “continental “25” comes to her own when Orsolya’s reaction to her role in the homeless man’s suicide grows too complicated to be explained alone. Her whole world becomes oblique around her desire to live with herself, and Jew’s comedy is ultimately so raw-so laced with the hurtful humor for self-recognition-not because Orsolya’s methods seem to pull her further away from the source of her problems, but rather To do that is precisely what makes them effective in achieving that goal.
The cosmic joke in the center of “continental ’25” is that cruelty systems are because millions of people only feel guilty not to feel guilty at all, and the reality is that its punchline would never be at Orsolya’s expense. After all, she is as innocent as it gets.
Rating: B+
“Continental ’25” premiered at 2025 Berlin International Film Festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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