SALON

Friday, Jan 7, 2011 9:20 PM UTC

“If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle”: Romania continues its cinematic resurgence

"If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle" is a gripping prison drama with a magnetic James Dean-esque hero

By

Topics: Film Salon, Our Picks, Movies,

George Pistereanu in "If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle"

If you’ve been wondering what the deal is with all these Romanian movies — like, you’re curious, but apprehensive about the prospect of arduous, vitamin-enriched art — then the taut, utterly unpretentious prison yarn “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle,” from a young director named Florin Serban, might be a good place to start. This movie isn’t a post-Commie Romanian masterpiece along the lines of Cristian Mungiu’s terrific abortion-themed thriller “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” or Cristi Puiu’s Dante-esque dark comedy “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu.” But it also isn’t as thematically daunting or gruesome as those films, and offers an introduction to the lean-and-mean, social-realist Romanian storytelling style that’s built around a charismatic young actor and a familiar genre. (On the other hand, if you’re already a devotee, you should know that Puiu’s “Aurora” and Radu Muntean’s “Tuesday, After Christmas,” last year’s festival hits from Romania, will reach our shores soon.)

Bedroom-eyed skinhead George Pistereanu plays a teenage offender named Silviu, who’s spent the last four years in a ramshackle juvenile facility somewhere in the countryside. As is customary in Romanian films, there’s a lot of focus on the bureaucracy and ineptitude that dominate everyday life in a country that’s still trying to catch up to contemporary Europe after decades under a backward-looking, repressive dictatorship. As the title suggests, Silviu is something of an existential antihero, a young man who has forged his own ethical compass without much help from the world, and is going to follow its dictates come hell or high water.

Although he’s both an ominous and seductive-looking fellow, trudging around the decrepit grounds in an ill-fitting tracksuit, Silviu has built up a good-kid reputation in prison, and is only two weeks away from release. That’s before his little brother, who’s no more than 11 or 12, shows up to tell him that their no-account mother is back in town, and wants to spirit him away to Italy. And before a doe-eyed, luscious-lipped college student named Ana (Ada Condeescu) arrives at the prison to interview Silviu, as part of some faintly condescending sociology research project.

When Silviu’s mother (Clara Voda) turns up in person, a blond, nervous type no older than 40, we finally get a little of the family back-story, but not all that much. We never learn why she left in the first place, or exactly why Silviu is in prison. (Generic answers to both: Because bad things happened.) Serban is ruthlessly focused on the present tense, and reveals Silviu’s mounting sense of distress entirely through his actions. Silviu willfully breaks prison rules, stages a tense confrontation with the sniggering would-be crime boss who runs his dormitory, borrows a clandestine cell phone at outrageous rates. (One phone call costs seven packs of cigarettes.) The film’s power stems largely from Silviu’s James Dean-like combination of physical menace and tender-hearted naiveté. In his only confessional moment, he tells a friend that he plans to marry Ana, whom he’s met exactly once, and imagines picking her up after work (and having an extended sexual workout in the car on the way home).

We can see Silviu’s violent explosion coming well before it arrives, but that doesn’t make it any less tragic or effective. Let’s just say that he, his mother and Ana all wind up in the same room, along with a critically injured guard, and that his mother has to face the fact that her oldest son is willing to throw his life away in an effort to keep her youngest son from her. And you needn’t worry that “When I Want to Whistle” ends in apocalyptic bloodshed or anything — Silviu may do bad and stupid things, but he isn’t a monster, and Serban closes the film on a note of haunting, ambiguous sadness. We’re never going to know whether Silviu is right about his mother; we only know she is forced to consider that he might be.

“If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle” is now playing at Film Forum in New York, with more cities and DVD release to follow.

 

Andrew O

More Andrew O'Hehir.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 1 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Film Salon is a collaborative blog, bringing together critics, bloggers, filmmakers, movie professionals and fans to discuss the hottest topics in the film world. It is moderated by Andrew O'Hehir.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
164 points165 points | 4 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
116 points117 points | comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
37 points38 points | 8 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
13 points14 points | comment
vote
Obstruction Will Ruin GOP - Playing politics & abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
14 points15 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations