Eu când vreau sa fluier, fluier

Sadly, only a few savvy reviewers seem to have gotten the point in, If I Want To Whistle I Whistle. Rather than what it is about, this film is not about many things: it is not a film about Romania, about prisons, about troubled youth, nor about prison breaks (and certainly not about 'Prison Brake', as the nitwit who only saw the trailer put it).

This is simply a film about an individual's highly charged personal drama. It's a story that could happen anywhere on earth to anybody at all. I knew it would be good when in the first two minutes I got that churning feeling in my gut that something just wasn't right.

Despite the prison setting, the inmates don't really seem to have the sort of animosity towards one another as one sees in all American prison movies. The guards, too, seem to be easy going, chatting rather casually with the prisoners who are working outdoors and making the best of it by singing and carrying on some light banter. And yet, the tension is somehow palpable. I don't know why anybody would complain about the pacing here. It makes no pretense to being an action film, and for the story it's telling, the pacing is spot on.

There is an intense focus on Silviu, the protagonist, who learns from his younger brother that their mother has arrived to take him back to Italy with her a week before Silviu is due to be released. In fact this is the basic premise of the movie, and even before I started it I expected that it would likely end up being rather flat and uninteresting. I mostly felt obliged by the number of nods Romanian films have gotten lately at International Festivals (including this one, in Berlin). I made the right choice.

This is a Drama in the real sense of the word; an examination of raw emotions that surround one's personal microcosm and all the things, little and small, that those around you may know about but can't possibly understand. The director manages to put the audience in Silviu's shoes every step of the way. You feel for him, you question him, and the whole time the tension mounts as you're wondering how it's all going to end up.

There is no reason to post any spoilers here, more detail will take away from the experience should you choose to watch it. I commend the actors who were brilliant, particularly George Pistereanu's, Silviu, but also the Director, Florin Serban, for his vision and the crew who took part in the production. While it's not the glossy type of film Hollywood's gotten us used to, it's very obvious that a lot of thought went into making it and that's why I rate it as highly as I do. 9/10

Is not necessarily a bad movie and for a new viewer of Romanian movies could be quite interesting. The problems of the movie are the theme and filming style. I'm sick and tired of Romanian movies filmed from hand to provide reality (if I want reality I open the door or the TV) and also to see movies about low-end society family problems. I don't need to go to cinema and pay to have a better understanding of 5 o'clock TV news. Romania is much more better than it's low life and I hope one day, Romanian movie makers will stop pushing forward the garbage (for other to pity us) and start doing movies to promote us as we really are: beautiful, smart and extremely funny!

A visual artist knows that adding a little dot of light in the iris could change the whole portrait or even ruin the initial intention. Not adding the right dot, could have the same effect. Finding THAT balance, something needed in everything we do! That balance is written all over this movie! One reviewer from Romania is fed up with "movies about low-end society family problems". I don't know if Romanians make only such movies but this one is certainly not about Romania. And here the balance I was talking about becomes clear: a simple, personal tragedy may look unimportant to others but to the one who is tormented by it, it becomes life itself. The whole movie is feeding on this sentence, if I may say so. It dictates the filming and editing style (kudos for editing!), the choice of characters, dialog (probably improvised) and everything else. The movie is quiet (almost no soundtrack, very long minutes of no dialog, long takes) and yet the tension and ugliness of the personal horror could deafen someone. The hand held camera is also barely noticeable (someone was complaining about it), far from a Dogma head ache. This slight shake is a reminder the story is not a studio pose but a live action. The theme could be illustrated in many other ways, and it's been done before, probably because the theme is so human and unfortunately forever recurrent. But what impressed me the most is the movie as a whole. The film maker, if I can make him "responsible" for the result, must be a very elegant man, in terms of manners. A man that doesn't shout out his empathy but presents it on a silver tray. Bravo!

When I want to whistle, I whistle. That means I would do Anything to get where I want.I am begging everybody, I am humiliating myself I let people spit in my face, but I would do anything, and if by begging,by trying to get the minimum of understanding, I can't do it, then I can give up all the chances of happiness I still have left. Living in the post communist Romania can be a bigger drama for an individual, but that drama is hidden and digs dipper and dipper because it's not shared by anyone. Your mother works in Italy because of financial reasons. She also discovers another world, things that she never had before, and by sending some money home she thinks she's making it up. After her son gets to be institutionalised...she doesn't want to feel the guilt so she pretends to forget. Who's drama is this one?Silviu's?his mother's? his brother's? Everyones!!! But only Silviu feels the burden, only he wants to change something. It is not the result, but his spirit that matter. His spirit is alive, and everybody else is peacefully pleased with the same old. Institutionalized sanity. His sanity manifests itself as insanity in an insane society... There's a strong silence, sometimes we can even listen to it and understand it.

"Eu cand vreau sa fluier, fluier" (If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle) is a complex drama about an inmate(Silviu) at a prison in Romania who is to be released in 15 days, but finds out that his mother just came back from Italy and she wants to take his younger brother there with her. Also she wants to leave in 7 days, a thing which Silviu cannot accept.

The movie is not for everybody and cannot be compared with other movies related to prisons, prisoners or stuff like that. It does not have clever escape plans, surprising events or crazy shootings. What made this movie so successful at Berlin Festival (where it won two awards, including the Silver Bear) was the unique way of directing from Florin Serban, but also the intense drama of the situation which drives Silviu to extreme limits, making him do the most unthinkable things. Also in Silviu's life appears Ana, a young intern who has to make interviews with inmates.

Again, this movie is not for the masses. An average movie viewer today will probably become bored, will think this movie has no point and so on. Due to today's trend in the movie industry, films like these are ignored and labeled as bad movies. Luckily, there are still critics like those from the Berlin Film Festival which can rate a movie to its true value.