For a cinema phenomenon that has broken barriers through the radicalism of its discourse – aesthetic and thematic – the New Romanian Wave, seen as a quasi-spontaneous phenomenon by which the Romanian cinema adopted a cinematic language of Bazinian origin (see Gorzo), almost 20 years (or 15, depending on who you ask) from its beginning, is decisively on the verge of ending. And the best hint in this regard is almost entirely represented by La Gomera, Corneliu Porumboiu’s latest film, which debuted on Saturday night in the Official Competition of the Cannes Film Festival.

The discussion of breaking the New Romanian Wave has slowly started to dominate the debates on the local cinema for some years now – but so far, the vast majority of the discourse that proposed a Romanian post-wave cinema focused almost exclusively on the rise of new voices in the Romanian cinema, whose debuts marked a separation of the Bazinian aesthetics or the harsh thematic which addressed subjects related to the post-communist Romanian daily life. But, while filmmakers such as Adina Pintilie, Ivana Mladenovic or Bogdan Theodor Olteanu were getting all the attention (and for good reason!), with little stops on Radu Jude’s remarkable course, much of the discussion neglected to include the authors who built the core of the movement – under the presumption, a fake one as it seems, that they will continue to work in the same artistic range. Thus, it is even more surprising (even shocking for some) the radical turn of Corneliu Porumboiu’s aesthetic and thematic values ​​in his latest film, La Gomera, a large co-production that places the action of the film over three countries: Romania, Spain and Singapore. And if the released scenes of Malmkrog, Cristi Puiu’s latest film (submitted as well for this year’s Cannes Official Competition but without being further selected; apparently a Kammerspiel happening in the beginning of the 20th century, in French) can serve as proof of this trend, it becomes clear that the Wave is over.

The action of the film revolves around Cristi, an anti-drug policeman caught in the web of a complicated international corruption affair, where a mattress factory led by the enigmatic Zsolt (Sabin Tambrea) hides huge amounts of cash inside its products, and delivers them to Venezuela, in the hands of Paco (a mobster played by Argentinian cult-director Agusti Villaronga). Played by a mono-expressive Vlad Ivanov, hiding every emotion under a hard and cold mine, Cristi is a morally ambiguous character, an opportunist ready to change alliances, break his promises, and completely change plans at any moment – just as the vast majority of the characters in the film. The policeman is relentlessly trapped between his boss’s plans to capture the criminal network at all costs, Magda, and the plan of Zsolt’s lover, Gilda (Catrinel Marlon), a femme fatale who wants to find the hidden money. Thus, the operation brings Cristi to a small Canary island called La Gomera – where he will learn to use the mystical language El Silbo, composed solely of whistles. Over an already dense and overwhelming narrative, Porumboiu weaves an extensive network of meta-cinematic references, from classical titles such as John Ford’s The Searchers, to small easter eggs recognized only by the Romanian public, such as With Unstained Hands (Sergiu Nicolaescu) and the B.D. series.

From its very first minutes, La Gomera leaves behind the aesthetic marks that have established Corneliu Porumboiu’s distinctive auctorial style. If in When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (2013) the main character imagines the possibilities to represent reality in long scenes of over 12 minutes thanks to digital technology, here we find from the very beginning an alert editing and the use of the shot reverse shot technique , playfully accompanied by the iconic The Passenger by Iggy Pop, of highly saturated images guided by the dynamic movements of the camera, and the subsequent turn to a non-linear and extensive narrative is par excellence the infringement of one of the basic principles of Bazin – the strong unity and the space-time continuity of action. (At the same time, dividing the action in chapters, by using inter-titles in neon-color and Sans-Serif fonts, after the names of the seven main characters, serves as pillar for the popular aesthetics of the contemporary European cinema.)

And if the Wave was reprimanded as being non-imaginative due to the lack of visual dynamism, as well as the appeal to the values ​​of the genre, Porumboiu proves to be perfectly capable of discouraging these criticisms – in essence, La Gomera combines comedy (one of the few features of his cinema from the very beginning) with elements of action film and film noir to build a heist movie that is more similar to Ocean’s 11 than to Alphaville. While some critics pointed out that the film addresses some of the thematic leitmotifs in the author’s cinema, such as the criticism of state systems (in this case, the police force) and corruption, as well as the questioning of the limits of vocabulary and language, these elements are actually used to create the premises of the elucidation as comedy, instead of a (self) reflection – not a few times, Cristi hisses and spits through fingers during whistle lessons, and the cops are most often seen in miserable situations that show their incompetence. And if Porumboiu proves to succeed in making a neo-noir film with a clear orientation towards a wide audience, the way women are represented can be seen as ostentatious, as their exploitation is practically inscribed in the genetic code of this type of cinema – one of the first sequences in the film is a scene of sizzling sex with shots that highlight Gilda’s erogenous areas (who, for good measure, is also sexually harassed a bit later by a mobster in a scene that has no narrative consequence); and while Cristi’s mother is a gullible woman who unconsciously setts off the decline of her own son, Magda is the archetype of the scoundrel, of the powerful woman who is totally detestable at a human level.

Of course, we can argue that La Gomera is a silent statement about the film industry and the festival itself – because you need to take minimalism / bazinianism off at the Official Competition entrance, if you want to get in. At the same time, it’s a comeback to all those voices that have criticized the New Romanian Wave as being dull, depressive and boring, unable to attract great fundings and to deliver dynamic narratives showing “sex and shootings” in a various visual range, even sumptuous. But, if getting all these (and making, as some call it, a mature film), meant that Porumboiu had to leave behind everything that artistically individualized him, I can’t help wondering if this is a winning bet entirely – although the quality of the film is absolutely indisputable when it comes to directing and production, I can’t help yearn for that unique contemplative tone of his first films.

Flavia Dima

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.