From Romanian director Paul Negoescu, a cautionary tale that pivots from countryside corruption & comic incompetence to real casualties; Gogol drollery to Grand Guignol. Iulian Postelnicu, in an award-winner perf, is the small town chief of police (well, he’s got one assistant) hoping to buy a local orchard with cash raised from a flat he co-owns in Bucharest with his siblings. But first, the town mayor (who along with the local priest are a formidable tag team of self-interest) needs a favor. Seems the husband of the prettiest wife in town has met with an ‘accident.’ Worse, that newly hired junior cop has taken it upon himself to investigate before the proper authorities come up with the ‘truth.’ (And BTW: here’s the deed to that orchard you asked about.) A fine sick joke lets us know the Mayor had, years back, stolen the property from the family that built it up. In the first half, Negoescu gives this a mordant, yet still comic edge. But once the junior cop is beaten to within an inch of his life for being honest, all the laughs stick in your throat as backtracking & coverups take over, personal limits of conduct are broached, and the price of doing business in a one boss town turns deadly. Exceptionally brought off, with clear as a bell staging (often from a little further back than you expect) and no one but one lucky chicken, who opens the film getting bumped out of a truck before deciding to cross the road, none the worse for wear.
ATTENTION MUST B PAID: No doubt there’s some political allegory going on that will largely escape non-Romanians. But the film works perfectly well without such knowledge. (And note how our poster sticks to a comedy angle.)
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