A riveting slice of Romanian new wave drama, haunted by shadows of the Ceausescu era and never less than thought-provoking.
At Cannes the audience was purring with delight; partly at a cop movie that outwits every cop-movie expectation, partly because the devil of Draconianism gets the best arguments and we, the liberal-hearted viewers, feel as stretched, racked, tested and challenged as the lovably forlorn hero.
The insidious humour and fascination with moral quandaries keep it consistently engrossing.
This whole film is very "police": that is, not exciting or dramatic, but suspicious, cynical and exhausted.
Patience with Police, Adjective feels more than justified – it feels rewarded.
The pace of the narrative is positively glacial, there are long stretches without dialogue (or incident), and he uses a fixed camera to record interminable scenes of mind-numbing tedium. But the final deadpan sequence in which Cristi’s boss laboriously attempts to teach him the meaning of the word conscience is a small absurdist triumph.
Sadly, the film does little more than illuminate the audacity of a film-maker intent on testing the benevolence of his audience by presenting them with nothing of interest to watch.
One of the most fascinating movies of the year.
Police, Adjective makes the gritty-realist longueurs of The Wire look like Transformers, and the mundanity of The Bill look like Miami Vice.
Police, Adjective--Corneliu Porumboiu profile
General release. Check local listings for show times.