Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s “Kontinental ’25”, which is one of the two films from him during this year, amused me to some degree. While being relatively less edgy and provocative than his two previous film “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” (2021) and “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” (2023), the movie is still as absurd and engaging as you can expect from Jude, who has risen as another interesting Romanian filmmaker to watch during last several years.

At first, the movie simply regards the daily life of an old homeless man living in Cluj, Romania. While almost penniless at present, he has lived in the basement of some old building to be demolished sooner or later, and, not so surprisingly, he is later visited by a female bailiff named Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) and several policemen, who are soon going to evict him out of the basement as ordered by the local court. Once he sees that resistance is futile, the old man asks for some time for gathering his private stuffs before eventually getting evicted, and Orsolya and the policemen have no problem with that at all.

However, a very unexpected thing occurs while they wait outside the building. When they return later, they are shocked to discover that the old man committed suicide in a rather grisly way, and Orsolya soon finds herself ridden with a lot of guilt in addition to being blamed for his death by numerous local social media users out there. Incidentally, many of these local social media users emphasize a lot on her specific ethnic background (She is a Romanian of Hungarian descent, by the way), and this certainly exasperates her more.

Needless to say, everyone around her says that she does not need to blame herself at all, but Orsolya continues to wonder more about whether she is responsible for the old man’s death, while nobody gives any definite answer for that. For instance, her husband is more occupied with their upcoming vacation in Greece, and, not so surprisingly, she later decides not to go to Greece along with him and their kids. One of her close friends tries to console and then advise her a bit during their little private meeting, but her friend only comes to show more of her own hypocrisy on many others in the city as disadvantaged as the old man. In case of her mother, the mood seems cordial between them at first, but they only end up arguing with each other over some petty matters, before Orsolya eventually leaves her mother’s apartment.

These and several other key scenes in the film are presented in considerably long and static extended shots, and this will not surprise you much if you are familiar with some of many notable Romanian films during last 20 years. For example, I still remember how long a certain extended scene in the second half of Corneliu Porumboiu’s exceptional comedy film “12:08 East of Bucharest” (2006) is – and how funny and compelling that scene is even though the camera simply observes the absurd situation of its three main characters from its static position without any interruption. In case of Jude’s “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World”, it just presents its finale in static extended shot, but we gradually get its bitter and sardonic point while a lot of things happen in front of the static camera, and that is another big laugh from the film.

Compared to these two films, “Kontinental ’25”, which won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlin International Film Festival early in this year, feels less focused and more scattershot. I must confess that I sometimes scratched my head on what it is exactly about during my viewing, but I appreciate how deftly Radu handles those key scenes presented in extended shots. As the center of the film, Eszter Tompa is splendid as her character often swings back and forth across many different emotional modes, and several other main cast members including Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanța, Oana Mardare, Șerban Pavlu, and Annamária Biluska function as an effective counterpart to Tompa during their respective scenes.

The funniest part in the movie comes from the encounter between Orsolya and her former student, who currently works as a delivery man. Although he does not like his current job much, this lad is pretty vivacious to say the least, and we are not so surprised when Orsolya later meets him not long after her husband and kids went away to Greece. When they talk with each other at a bar, he enthusiastically tells several morbidly amusing anecdotes involved with real-life Buddhist monks, and I assure you that you will have some good laughs even while wincing a bit for good reasons.   

Although you will be a bit disappointed with its rather fizzling ending, you may remain amused by a number of nice humorous touches throughout the film. In case of one particularly offbeat detail during its opening part, you will be caught off guard at first, but you will probably laugh a bit more when that appears again later in the film. The movie also makes some indirect points on the post-socialist economics of the Romanian society and the housing crisis associated with that, and this aspect becomes more evident when the camera simply observes several buildings in the city one by one before the end credits.

In conclusion “Kontinental ’25”, whose title is incidentally inspired by Roberto Rossellini’s 1951 film “Europe ‘51”, is less impressive than “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” and “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World”, but it is still interesting enough for recommendation in my trivial opinion. Again, I merely admire Jude’s filmmaking talent instead of being quite enthusiastic, but I am willing to keep following his career nonetheless, and that is all I can say for now.