Radu Jude's films intentionally take their viewers, especially those in Romania, out of their comfort zone. Whether it's about national history, its repercussions in the present, or current events, the director and screenwriter place a mirror in front of the viewers in which they see themselves, those close to them, and those who surround them. Any mirror is a reflection of reality, but mirrors can also distort. They magnify some details, shrink or hide others, offering a processed image of the world in their field of vision. This is what happens with 'Kontinental '25', the film that premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and is now starting its journey on screens in Romania. Through the title, Radu Jude ambitiously places his film, and perhaps not only this film, under the tutelage of Roberto Rossellini. The stars, aligned or misaligned, gave me the opportunity to be present at one of the first screenings today.
Orsolya, the heroine of the film, is a bailiff in Cluj. The first scenes of the film do not show her, however, but Ion, a former athlete, who has become a ruin of a human being, a homeless and a beggar, rummaging through the city's garbage to fill his bags with recyclables from the sales of he barely survives. Orsolya, together with the gendarmes, executes an eviction order for Ion, an order postponed because she had already been benevolent and tried to help Ion in the past. Desperate, Ion asks for 20 minutes to arrange his affairs and commits suicide. Orsolya, although she is not at fault and the incident cannot have legal repercussions for her, feels guilty. In addition, Romanian nationalist circles in the press and on social networks try to create a diversion case out of this story. The event shakes the fragile balance of her world, already based on compromises. She is Hungarian and married to a Romanian officer. Her mother is a Hungarian nationalist, but she converted to Orthodoxy in order to integrate into her husband's family. She lives in a privileged area of the city undergoing spectacular development, but her profession puts her in contact with the most disadvantaged of the citizens left behind in neo-capitalist Romania. The film is a succession of dialogues between Orsolya and several people: a friend involved in social activities, her mother, a former student, her priest, in which the heroine tries to find peace and ease her conscience. Is there a real solution to these turmoils, or the only alternative is to retreat back into compromise?
Screenwriter Radu Jude manages to catch in this story many of the contradictions that simmer under the spectacular development of the Transylvanian capital into a technological center and a modern European city: the traumas of history and nationalist resentments, the differences in social status and economic situation between those who have succeeded and those who were left behind by the system, an imperfect political and judicial apparatus. Film director Radu Jude alternates the fiction built through a succession of episodes captured by the Ozu-style fixed camera, with images of the Cluj of contrasts that recall his experimental films that explored the past based on archival photographs. The fictional part is supported by an excellent team of actors built around the main heroine played by Eszter Tompa. The combination works very well and the effect is assertive and disturbing, as the filmmaker intended. If it weren't like that, it wouldn't be a Radu Jude film.
