La Gomera

... but with lashings of skulduggery, this enjoyable and original noirish escapade mixes Spanish villains with corrupt Romanian detectives via a cryptic whistle to cover their tracks.

It's actually a co-production, but mostly Romanian. I could say is the first Romanian film made intelligently, for international distribution. Of course, it's not a masterpiece, by far, but, compared to the previous level of Romanian films, it's a great qualitative leap. Vlad Ivanov, the lead, is almost an expressionless actor. I can't say the same about Catrinel Marlon, she is very expressive, dressed and undressed. Talented and very beautiful, a face reminiscent of Penelope Cruz and Nastassja Kinski, Catrinel Marlon I hope she'll become a great actress. Very convincing Rodica Lazar in the role of the very annoying prosecutor. The rest of the cast is good, the movie is worth to be seen. Porumboiu surpasses himself from one film to another. I wish him to keep it that way, higher and higher.

I was fascinated with the whistling communication from old times and the whole web of gangsters involved into it, maybe not very spectacular action but entertaining for sure.

Very neat film with consistent tone, not too fast not too slow, it exploits its resources very well. There are not too many locations and all of them are very well chosen and filmed, mostly the remore island of La Gomera and Bucharest. Scenes never drag, there's very neat dialogue as well. It does a lot with just enough, the main character is a man of few words but everything is understood and I rooted for him. Very elegant film, if anything a bit too orderly, meeting all the requirements of the genre as a well-applied applicant. It joins the trend of narrative in closed chapters and it works great, again, very elegant and orderly. The lead female is an absolute beauty, as should be the case in any self-respecting neo-noir. And there's the whistling thing which is awesome, that alone gives something special to the story, a pretty cool touch, yearning like a fairy tale, or maybe more like an opera.

Good stuff, perfect gem of a movie, ideal for an evening when you don't know what movie you want to watch.

First Hit: I was, and even a day later, confused by this story and film.

We're really introduced to Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) and Gilda (Catrinel Marlon) when Gilda walks up to Cristi and asks to speak with him in his apartment. Cristi whispers into her ear that he apartment is bugged, so she kisses him and tells him she'll play the part of a hooker, and they can whisper her request, which is to help her by getting a criminal, Zsolt, out of prison.

In an early scene, Cristi is on a ferry heading to an island where the ancient people use to communicate by whistling. Cristi is part of a plot working with other criminals to free Zsolt and to do this he has to learn the whistling language.

The language breaks vowels and consonants into seven whistling sounds. This lesson in this language was the most exciting part of the film. I was fascinated with Cristi learning how to whistle and wanted to practice, along with him, right in the theater.

As the film develops, some parts led me to believe that the story in the movie was pre-planned, and I missed something as the film progressed. At other times, I felt as though Cristi and Gilda were planning the ending along the way because they'd fallen for each other.

As an undercover detective, Cristi works for an unnamed woman place by Rodica Lazar, who is trying to play both ends of this story.

The result is a film that has the appearance of a storyline running at two different levels, but in the end, the person sitting next to me asked if he missed something about how the ending worked out, I said "I don't know," and I still don't.

Ivanov was quietly compelling as the detective who was also on the take. Marlon was excellent as the woman who seemed totally in control of story behind the plot. Lazar was strong as the head of the investigation and also susceptible to corruption. Corneliu Porumboiu wrote and directed this quizzical story that left me hanging.

Overall: I either missed a critical section of this Romanian film or the story was attempting to be too elusive.