Cannes. "Tales from the Golden Age"

By David Hudson on 05/20/2009

"Written entirely by Cristian Mungiu, the Romanian director of '4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days,' which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes two years ago, the five parts of 'Tales from the Golden Age' were shot by five different Romanian directors," begins Peter Brunette in the Hollywood Reporter. "Each segment recreates an urban myth that flourished during the repressive regime of dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, the so-called 'Golden Age' of Romanian history. Each part is told with the kind of brio and bitter irony that only Eastern Europeans seem able to muster."

"This is probably the most efficient way to experience what makes the Romanians such distinctive moviemakers," writes the Boston Globe's Wesley Morris. "They are comedians and tragedians often within the same movie, but in either instance only casually so. The movies are made in an almost deadpan style that's close to realism but loose enough to incorporate melodrama, polemic, and farce. Nothing is flashy - the muted colors and uninflected style seem like extensions of the national psyche. The characters are good, everyday people - no one's impoverished but some of the judgment is often instructively poor. 'Golden Age' is the jauntiest and most openly allegorical thing I've seen them attempt. It's witty, its contents succinct and entertaining. They're some of the most natural storytellers in movies. Narrative moviemaking has a good name in their hands."

"However grim things were, however absurd and corrupt and illogical the nature of the system that governed them, communism really did bring people together," writes Matt Bochenski in Little White Lies. "In the tiny apartment blocks, the schools, the stores with nothing on the shelves, the people are always pulling together, trading a complex social network of favours and friendships to find a way - any way - to express their humanity and need for love in a loveless, often inhumane country. The stand out for me was probably the policeman and his pig - which built to a hands-over-the-eyes denouement featuring a gassed pig, a blowtorch and the inevitable waiting to happen."

"As a portmanteau, it is more coherent than most ('Paris, I Love You,' 'Eros,' 'Tokyo!,' 'Triangle,' 'Three Extremes') which are often hit and miss." Screen's Mike Goodridge: "Not only are the five films here consistently strong but the cumulative effect is to offer a surreal portrait of life in Romania in the 1980s where undertones of fear, corruption and imprisonment are never far away from the laughter and spirit which kept the people afloat."

"Most of these films are very funny, and all of them are sharp-eyed and hugely revealing," writes the Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu. "This is the rare portmanteau that's more than the sum of its parts."

"The question is, which version will people catch?" notes Jay Weissberg in Variety. "Cannes screenings consisted of five of the six episodes, with repetition screenings switching around not just the order, but also which of the six were included. The producers said they want to re-create the confusion of life under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, when you never knew what you were getting; they've also refused to attribute the individual episodes, though tonally and stylistically, both 'The Legend of the Air Sellers' and 'The Legend of the Chicken Driver' are unlikely to have been directed by anyone other than Mungiu himself."

As Sharon Swart reports in Variety, IFC Films has picked up US distribution rights.

An Un Certain Regard entry.

Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 2009.

[Photo: "Tales from the Golden Age," Mobra Films and IFC Films, 2009]

Tags: Cannes 2009, Cristian Mungiu, Romanian Cinema