From those years of fervour when the Romanian New Wave was at its peak, sparking global interest in the local cinema and at the same time influencing a new generation of filmmakers to pick up the camera, the story (or even mythology) that persisted was that of feature films. However, it would be a mistake not to recognise another important phenomenon from those years: the resurgence of Romanian short films and their unprecedented popularity. These were the years when festivals like NexT and Filmul de Piatra emerged, years when leading filmmakers (especially Radu Jude) explored the short film format, while UNATC students’ projects brought incredible energy, drawing a large, mostly young and enthusiastic audience. In this landscape, a critic decided to step into production and, later, directing, with his name becoming a pillar of those incredible years for the Romanian short film and one of their most idiosyncratic representatives: Andrei Crețulescu.

The handful of short films he released in the first half of the last decade – starting with the modest Bad Penny (2010) and Kowalski (2014), followed by the gut punch Ramona (2015), presented in Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique and enjoying a great festival run afterwards, a feminist revenge thriller (a term that was still a rarity at the time) followed by Seven Months Later (2016), which marked a shift toward drama – showed what we might broadly call the paradox of the filmmaker-critic, or the critic-filmmaker. On one hand, there’s a deep understanding of the unitary rules of cinema (whether genre or otherwise), accompanied by the natural desire to point out – the critical gesture par excellence – one’s own mechanisms and driving forces. On the other hand, there’s a joy in practising those very rules, in fully embracing them, an unbridled pleasure in holding the reins of the film narrative and controlling its trajectory.

For Crețulescu, that joy extends to every part of his cinematic craft: a knack for spirited dialogue (with plenty of humour, sarcasm, snappy comebacks, and a good dose of profanity), a delight in playing with (meta-)referentiality and genre conventions (while indirectly commenting on the formality of the Romanian New Wave), an “artisanal” way of making films (the same close collaborators, the same actors in all his projects) that translates into easily identifiable auteurist trademarks, and, last but not least, a fascination with the “structuring absence” – in a sense, all his films possess something that exists beyond the edges of the frame or the temporal bounds of the action.

Yet if by the middle of the last decade, the director was a constant presence on the festival circuit – there was almost a guarantee that every new TIFF edition would introduce a new project of his – something changed after his feature debut, Charleston (or, in its work-in-progress name, Charlton Heston). A (somewhat) black comedy that adapted Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair in a humorous and slightly awkward key – implicitly commenting on the famous extremely sappy 1999 adaptation starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore – Charleston didn’t create much of a stir, despite being selected in the Official Competition at Locarno (a rare feat for a Romanian film, and a rarity for a debut), and despite marking what, in 2017, was becoming the shift beyond the New Wave: the stylistic diversification of Romanian cinema. (For example, Crețulescu’s films were a breath of fresh air because they featured soundtracks and musical scores, which for many filmmakers were still a diegetic taboo.)

What followed were seven years of silence, during which he did release two short films (Parabelum in 2018 and These Days in 2020), which didn’t circulate beyond TIFF – until now. Dedicating half of a review to summarising a filmmaker’s work might seem strange or didactic, but I believe these points should be revisited not just because we are dealing with a filmmaker returning after such a long hiatus – but especially because all these elements are an integral part of his sophomore film, which has been a long time in the making. Ext. Car – Night, a film reborn from its own ashes (an extremely different project at first, which became impossible due to the pandemic – thus, it was massively rewritten), which announces its meta-cinematic intentions right from its title, had its premiere at this year’s TIFF as one the most anticipated Romanian titles of the edition.

Ext. Car – Night is one of those rare films that is difficult to describe other than in visual terms, yet lends itself extremely well to detailed analysis. In short, we have three main scenes, shot as single takes (but in different styles and formats), where the roles played by the actors – the usual suspects: Şerban Pavlu, Andi Vasluianu, Dorian Boguță, and Rodica Lazăr – and the predominant genre convention shift from one moment to the next, not only from one scene to another but even within each scene. But perhaps the most important element at play is how Crețulescu aligns himself with filmmakers like Radu Jude and Corneliu Porumboiu in making a film about making films (the resemblance of the second tableau to certain scenes from Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is striking at times, as if it was happening in another room of the corporation for which Angela’s character works). And the core of this goal, once fully crystallised in the third (and longest) sequence, unfolds deliberately over much of the film, acting not only as a meta-commentary on the original, unmade film but also as a broader reflection on the state of contemporary Romanian cinema.

This is not the kind of film where an angry filmmaker sharpens his knives and seeks to settle scores with his contemporaries (like Paul Schrader’s Oh Canada!, to give a recent example). I mentioned earlier the paradox of the critic: and here, something beyond the impossibility of shooting the original script seems to have decisively tipped the balance towards the (self-)critical side. All these genre and plot twists, all these targeted (and often explicit!) references to a wide range of filmmakers – from Welles and Buñuel to Verhoeven and Lynch, via Jodorowsky; plus, a sudden twist reminiscent of Lucrecia Martel’s La mujer sin cabeza / The Headless Woman – violently contrast with what we call, post-New Wave, the “rules of Romanian cinema”, yet many of this film’s stylistic choices are rooted precisely in that genealogy.

It’s an electrifying contrast, successfully treading the fine line between local and international referentiality. No other Romanian film since Metabolism (2013) has addressed so sharply and in such a cosmopolitan (and therefore broad-minded) manner the opportunism of many local productions (“I’ll make a Dardenne and I’m sure to bag a Cannes!”, Pavlu’s character says at one point), the general lack of analytical benchmarks, the PR-ized, superlative reactions we’ve become accustomed to as “cinema discourse”, and the toxic masculinity and the gender-based abuses faced by women in the industry.

Here, Crețulescu’s undeniable talent for dialogue reaches new heights: the four characters exchange lines (often sharp, sardonic) with the speed and intensity of a Roland Garros match, supported by the performances of four of the most important actors in Romanian cinema. Although at times these exchanges may veer into a certain demonstrative schematism (for example, in lines like “Do you even know what an ellipsis is?”), the bottom line is never clear in a film whose self-irony is not just a key element of its approach (how else to interpret the film’s great absent character, i.e. the director intent on shooting from a helicopter – along with the absence of the corresponding shot?) but also permeates the web of references the film weaves. Crețulescu knows he is none of the canonical filmmakers he brings up (and, we assume, adores), just as he knows he is simultaneously an insider and outsider of the local industry – how else to interpret the ease with which this film constructs and deconstructs its thriller status than as a way of showing that it doesn’t take itself too seriously (since these shifts are far from grandiose, quite the opposite) while remaining firm and calculated in its rigour?

It’s the essential trait of a film that knows where it stands, viewing its own stakes with a mixture of honesty, modesty, and sarcasm – and therein lies its greatest strength. In a year where its major films tread hard, with elephantine steps on the long, beaten path toward “An Important Message About The Society We Live In” – and that’s why they falter – Ext. Car – Night seeks to say something about itself first and foremost, only then turning its gaze toward what is close at hand, a terrain where it can act with precision. The most exciting and free Romanian film of the year so far, by a long mile – and possibly the only one that truly has something to say.

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.