In recent years – since before the pandemic – a particular phenomenon has been gaining traction in international cinema and consequently in local cinema: more and more film actors are stepping behind the camera, shifting from agents of the cinematic narrative into its architects. Among the few names in Romanian cinema who have made this transition over the past decade (such as Dana Rogoz, Maria Popistașu, and Dorian Boguță), Emanuel Pârvu stands out as one of the first – the most prolific of them all, and now, with the selection of his latest film in the Cannes’ Official Competition, probably the most renowned.

With a filmography comprising two features and a solid handful of shorts, we can draw some conclusions about the predominant themes and leitmotifs in his cinema: an intense focus on the notion of family (questioning the concept of love and the sacrifices made in its name), on rural communities and the ways poverty and petty corruption guide people’s actions. A somewhat exception would be Marocco, presented in 2021 in San Sebastian’s competition: set in Bucharest, Pârvu’s otherwise relatively discreet apparatus suddenly becomes obtrusive and histrionic, and any purported depth of action and moral analysis of the characters is annihilated by the over-dramatisation of the script and performances.

In this sense, Three Kilometres to the End of the World tends to be more similar to his 2017 debut, Meda or the Not So Bright Side of Things, not only aesthetically (stylistically, his films easily fit within the New Wave – abounding in long takes and wide shots) but especially thematically. This is mainly because both films are strongly inspired by cases widely covered in the Romanian media, which serve as a pretext for delving deep into the most impoverished, underdeveloped (always contrasting with the beauty of the local landscape), and ultimately violent areas of the country.

In an interview with Tarik Khaldi for the festival website, Pârvu reveals an extremely significant detail about the inspiration for the script, which was the horrific gang rape committed in Vaslui in 2014, a case that at the time sent shockwaves through society, being one of the first (and few) cases to spark a national debate on sexual assault before #MeToo or the Caracal kidnapping case. But what rather inspires the filmmaker and co-writer Miruna Berescu is the community’s reaction, which blames and even stigmatises the victim of the assault.

In 2017, I was writing about Meda… from the Sarajevo film festival a few words that could very well apply to Three Kilometres…: that it “painfully portrays the rural environment – a space that appears without a shred of ideological or nationalist gleam, being degraded in every imaginable sense: economically, culturally, and especially morally”; I also pointed out the “austere and restrained” acting (in both cases, Pârvu’s experience in front of the camera is evident: the way he guides his actors, especially the young ones, is exemplary). But much of the nuance of that first film, which seemed to “avoid enforcing clear, black-and-white interpretations of the protagonists’ actions (…) ignored by the centre, labelled as mere social welfare recipients, ignorant and manipulable,” seems to have been lost along the way: here, it is much harder to resonate (let alone empathise) with the characters; and the feeling is that the film has already decided, to a large extent, that their vast majority act in a reprehensible manner, infused to the core with patriarchy and homophobia.

A brief synopsis of the film’s story: Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea), a recent high school graduate, is brutally beaten one summer evening – an event that completely disrupts the tranquillity of his very modest family, supported by a father (Bogdan Dumitrache, shining in moments where he betrays absolute helplessness through silence) who owes a considerable debt to a local businessman with connections to the authorities (Richard Bovnoczki). It doesn’t take long for the perpetrators to come to light in the small community of Sfântu Gheorghe: but the revelation that they are the businessman’s sons and that they beat Adi after seeing him in the company of another boy ends up shattering both the family’s and the entire community’s peace, caught between a traditional way of life and the need to sustain themselves through tourism.

As in Meda…, Pârvu meticulously – but admittedly somewhat schematically – embroiders the details of the social tapestry of Sfântu Gheorghe, from elements that can almost go unnoticed (for instance, early in the film, the father takes generous swigs from a plastic beer bottle) to the larger picture of the village’s extremely precarious economic condition and the impossibility of acting “freely” in such a confined environment. From tax evasion and illegal fishing (a nod to the illegal logging in his first film) to domestic violence (ditto, though here the ending is “happier”) and routine corruption under the guise of “small understandings” – Three Kilometres… covers all these smaller or larger survival mechanisms and compromises of the characters, which Adi and his only ally, Ilinca (Ingrid Berescu, a remarkable debut), fundamentally reject. Not so much because they are just “innocent”, but because they seem to define a larger social message: namely, that a profound change in mentality is beginning to occur among younger generations, more connected to the internet and the knowledge it brings.

There’s something to be said here about how the film represents the queerness of its protagonist – there’s only one scene in the entire film (aside from the opening shot, where Adi and the “tourist” are seen from afar) that might suggest his sexuality is outside the hetero spectrum. Beyond that, at no point in the film does the character talk about himself – not about his orientation, or generally about any other feelings he might have. Which fits into a paradigm of representing homosexuality that is common in Romanian cinema and questions its legitimacy to some extent – raising the question: are we dealing with a genuine concern about the discrimination and hatred faced by the queer community, or just a simple plot device (as in Dan Chișu’s Five Minutes)? With very few exceptions (belonging more to first-time filmmakers like Adina Pintilie, Ivana Mladenovic, Marius Olteanu, and Eugen Jebeleanu), it is constructed only from verbal descriptions of the characters – not from its explicit depiction on screen.

Rather, what we extract from that scene, beyond a certain tenderness (but also danger – see the hedgehog they play with) is the enormity of the social gap between the two: one is an urban Bobo who goes to Electric Castle and casually invites people to visit him in Bucharest, and the other… comes from an environment where all the above happens to him. At the very least, the film doesn’t show the beating scene, which might initially seem like a way to offer the character dignity and a dose of ambiguity to sustain the initial investigative part of the film – but a later scene (without giving any major spoilers, points strongly towards Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills) completely contradicts this assumption. Rather, it seems that the strategy is to create a character who is the perfect victim – and in this respect, I don’t find much difference with the way Romanian cinema depicts violence against women.

It is still relatively unclear to me whether this choice about the emotional lives of the characters – beyond conveying a sufficiently clear socio-political message – has to do with the fact that all the characters in the film (perhaps except for the protagonist and Ilinca) exhibit not only absolute emotional opacity but also a type of behaviour that seems to be guided by the inertia of their own interests, or their own religious beliefs and superstitions, and (self-)reflection is almost entirely absent. (Where it does exist, it is replaced by various ways in which the characters justify or rationalise their behaviour.)

See, for example, the scene where Ciprian, one of the businessman’s two sons, nonchalantly admits to beating Adi. His nonchalance is reinforced by his certainty that the police will be appeased by his father’s money and connections. Not only is there no hint of remorse or even the slightest understanding that he hurt someone, but there’s no sign of self-awareness – as if not only is it normal that he messed someone up (because he doesn’t even suspect but decides he “takes it in his a**”), but also, for him, there was no other conceivable action to take in that scenario. As if to underline the latent way these characters act, the script is dotted with a true panoply of Romanian vernacular expressions – from “he must have done something” and “a sick person sometimes needs more than just a doctor” to “I made you, I kill you” and “we have a beautiful country, too bad it’s inhabited”. (Even conspiracy-mongering about COVID vaccines is ticked off at one point.)

Three Kilometres to the End of the World doesn’t say anything we don’t already know about Romanian society, its “pockets” of poverty, and the outdated (and phobic) mentality that exists in underdeveloped areas – nor does it say it in a way that steps even slightly outside already well-established cinematic conventions. It’s a film that rather seems to be asking for both pity and disapproval – and much of this feeling results from its continuous effort to demonstrate. I rather prefer Pârvu, the one who directed a short film as airy and freewheeling as Everything is Far Away – which in just 14 minutes, says infinitely more and leaves a much stronger impression.

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.