In his previous movies, Cristian Mungiu has interrogated Romanian society by focusing on specific aspects. In 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days it was the health care system via a woman seeking an abortion. In Graduation it was official corruption as seen through the education establishment. In his latest work, whose title essentially stands for the name of his country (as well as a medical procedure), he uses a wider lens to take in the meaning of Romania as a relatively new member of the EU and by extension its place in the larger world. He does it literally, by setting the movie in a rural village that itself is half populated by Hungarians who settled there years ago and which many residents have left in order to work abroad for better wages and benefits. We are introduced to our protagonist, Matthias (Marin Grigore), as he angrily quits his job at a slaughterhouse in Germany after being insulted and then hitchhiking his way back to the village. His wife, Ana (Macrina Barladeanu), is not happy to see him, even though their 8-year-old son, Rudi (Mark Edward Blenyesi), has been traumatized by something he saw in the woods on his way to school. Since then he has refused to talk, and Matthias takes it upon himself to try and invest some masculine qualities in the boy, since he thinks Rudi has become too feminized.

Though the mystery of what Rudi saw lingers in the background of this tense, moody drama, it is overshadowed by more immediate concerns. The local bread factory is desperately short of workers, and because they pay so poorly no locals answer their want ads, so they have engaged a broker to bring in labor from abroad (“Asians are better than Africans…”). Eventually, they hire two Sri Lankans, and the factory manager, Csilla (Judith State), finds them lodgings in a small apartment owned by the village’s self-proclaimed polymath. As the movie progresses, Mungiu slowly describes the interrelationships within the village, and the other shoe drops. The factory starts receiving threats against the foreign workers, who are accused of everything from stealing jobs to contaminating the bread they make with “pathogens.” When one of the Sri Lankans shows up at the village church—he is a Catholic, after all, though everybody assumes he’s Muslim—he is summarily walked out. Meanwhile, Matthias resumes his sex-only affair with Csilla (the main reason for Ana’s enmity toward him), who becomes the de facto defender of the foreigners, and not just because it’s her job. 

Throughout this thorny tale, Mungiu drop factoids about the Romanian situation vis-a-vis the EU, which has effectively closed the main employer in the village, an open strip mine, because of its environmental impact and hindered the lumber business by making large tracts of forest sanctuaries. (There is another foreign invader in town: a French biologist who is there to count the bears.) All these elements add to the villagers’ sense of aggrievement, and in a startlingly fluid, action-packed town hall meeting the parochial concerns of the various ethnic interests come to the surface, revealing not just the blatant xenophobia at large (it comes out that they’ve already, proudly, eliminated the “gypsy” population), but a shocking lack of understanding of how the world works. These are not uneducated people. They simply need someone to blame for things they don’t like and can’t do anything about. And while the movie’s ending takes a sudden dramatic turn, it’s not a development designed to provide closure. Though more than two hours long, R.M.N. feels as if it’s just getting around to addressing the problems it brings up when the end credits appear. 

In Romanian, Hungarian, German, English, French, Sinhala. Now playing in Tokyo at Euro Space Shibuya (03-3461-0211).

R.M.N. home page in Japanese

photo (c) Mobra Films-Why Not Productions-FilmGate Films-Film I Vest-France 3 Cinema 2022