- Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is on one helluva boring stakeout in Romanian black comedy
POLICE, ADJECTIVE (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2009)
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The first half of Corneliu Porumboiu’s POLICE, ADJECTIVE is as dreadfully boring as detective Cristi’s (Dragos Bucur) assignment, tailing a student, Victor (Radu Costin), who enjoys a joint with two of his friends every day after school. While Cristi wants to nail the kid’s supplier, the cop’s boss has him on a tight deadline, insisting he arrest Victor if the investigation continues to go nowhere, but Cristi strongly disagrees with putting the teenager away for up to seven years for a crime he believes will soon be abolished by the government. However, the film picks up considerably as Cristi seeks help from various contacts, getting caught up in red tape and public servants who would really rather not be bothered. And when he gets called in by the chief (Vlad Ivanov from 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, and 2 DAYS) and gets a long lecture in linguistics, well, you won’t be able to control yourself from laughing out loud. Porumboiu (12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST) keeps the pace very slow and very steady, but hang in there, because the end is a riot. POLICE, ADJECTIVE won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, screened at the New York Film Festival and at MoMA as part of the “Contenders, 2009,” series, and is Romania’s official entry for the Foreign Language Film Academy Award.