Avis Metacritic

Pulling harder and harder at the tension between complex socioeconomic forces and the simple human emotions they inspire, R.M.N. masterfully spins an all too familiar migration narrative into an atavistic passion play about the antagonistic effects of globalization on the European Union.

Its dizzying culmination of ideas proves more feature than bug.

This is masterly understated filmmaking marked by a few stand-out sequences, particularly a one-shot town hall meeting that lasts for an entire reel and throws all the issues on the table before erupting into chaos.

With bleak serenity of a man who has peered into the abyss and responded with a smile, the filmmaker offers no answer or easy way out to the intractable, and perhaps foundational, human capacity for hate than with his own virtuosic talent.

R.M.N. is a slow-motion snapshot of a deeply riven community flying apart in all directions, as though some bomb, detonated years or perhaps even centuries ago, has never stopped exploding.

The film’s craft, with its shivery wooded landscapes and deep focus, is consistently strong, and the acting – especially from State, but also many of the bickering village ensemble – spices up what might have been a route-one polemic.

The power of Mungiu’s work is his writing. Like much of Eastern European cinema of the past decade, he’s crafted a morality tale that should prompt a viewer to take a look at themselves in the mirror wherever they may live. And if it ends without any hint of resolution? With barely a glimmer of hope? So be it.

It’s tribute to Mungiu’s bravura as a writer and director that, despite the fact that he never quite finishes unpacking a suitcase full of themes and ideas, R.M.N. is never less than an absorbing watch.

R.M.N. is more suspense thriller than procedural, and it’s content to have the audience walk on the razor’s edge of doubt and fear through much of its two-hour running time. Perhaps too content.

RMN is a sombre downbeat movie, whose sudden flurry of dreamlike visions at the very end is a little disconcerting. But it is seriously engaged with the dysfunction and unhappiness in Europe that goes unreported and unacknowledged.