Imperfect as it may be to describe Radu Jude as “Ruben Östlund for the late-period Godard crowd,” few other descriptors would so immediately answer whether or not Romania’s most prolific provocateur is to your taste. Both filmmakers, who thrive on skewering the classist divides of modern Europe, exhibit key differences in their modes of parody—an Eastern vs. Western focus, larger-scale productions versus more intimate settings, and straightforward narrative versus experimental structuring. The biggest diversion between the two, though, would be that Östlund’s comedic satires are actually funny.
This distinction largely holds true for Jude’s first film this year, “Kontinental’25,” but in all fairness, it would be difficult for a movie of this premise to even approach its material with a comedic slant. Jude, ever the agitator, will try anyway, but what will wind up making this film compelling at all will be the restraint with which he continues to show off his shortcomings as a satirist. Perhaps it’s the solemnity of this pitch that has motivated him to scale things down even more than usual (read: keeping the film essay-isms to a minimum), but the director’s critical eye will be just as perceptive (or, more often, dulled) as always.
Opening on a near-silent odyssey through the daily traverses of a homeless man (Gabriel Spahiu) living in Cluj “Kontinental ‘25” will spend all of ten minutes laying bare the hardships of homelessness in an apathetic milieu before it makes the Jude-patented switch to the perspective of the bailiff in charge of his eviction from an apartment complex’s basement—imagine the first chapter of “Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn” if it actually amounted to anything.
This switch in perspective comes when the homeless man, given a brief respite to collect what few belongings he has, instead takes the moment of solitude to wrap a wire noose around his neck and end it all. Now, Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) is left with the racking guilt of her indirect responsibility for this man’s tragic suicide. The law says her hands are clean, but nothing can shake the sense deep in Orsolya’s soul that she could have—should have—done something differently.
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The basis of this search for closure comes in the form of a series of conversations Orsolya will have over the course of the film, leaving “Kontinental’25” more streamlined in its structure than the typical Jude affair, but no less ambling in where that structure leads. A husband, a colleague, a mother, a former student, a priest—all confessors to the same story we will hear told ad nauseam, but each differing response will do nothing to hide the sneaking sentiment that Orsolya’s sense of guilt is almost fetishistic.
This is, in a sense, the crux of Jude’s political critique, lambasting neoliberal complacency in the selfish framing of how another’s suffering will make YOU feel. It’s not an unworthy point of discussion, nor is it one that seems out of touch with the current state of political activism in the social media age. At the same time, it’s difficult to endure these droning conversations and pull from any of them the sort of insights that haven’t been unearthed on any other occasion tackling similar social ails.
“Kontinental’25,” as is typical for Jude, counters the fickleness of his actual criticism with an imbued contextualization within his native Romania, which comes to light most blatantly here in the intermittent musings on the nation’s Hungarian ethnic minority and their social mistreatment. It’s an intriguing dash of social commentary made all the more compelling because Jude doesn’t lay it on too thick—or rather, he lays it on with his usual caustic voice that fits so casually here in our current internet context. Xenophobic hate comments that were once a laugh to be brushed off between spouses suddenly take on a whole new connotation when they’re weaponized against a perpetrator of systemic discrimination.
For all these ideas Jude leaves us to chew on, it would be nice if “Kontinental’25” didn’t carry the filmmaker’s penchant for annoyance into its craft. In a way, it’s admirable to see him still able to irritate with such purposely minimal resources, but Marius Panduru’s iPhone-shot compositions get way too liberal with the wobbly autofocus, to the point where “contemporary minimalism” begins to masquerade as “not trying.” This is, however, about the level of cheekiness we are likely to expect from a director who finds great humor in simply pointing his camera at a mural that says “Enjoy Capitalism” in Coca-Cola lettering.
It’s precisely this sort of *ingenious* insight that leaves “Kontinental’25” struggling to reach a conclusive note in a narrative journey that finds the greatest tragedy—and its greatest (attempted) joke—in the refusal of comfortable closure. Radu Jude, then, chooses to end on a more contemplative note, one whose particular register would probably hit with greater impact were it not a montage that has seemingly appeared in at least two prior outings from the filmmaker (at least, his glacial sense of pace sure makes it feel that way). In this context, however, the setup more or less matches the punchline, even if the end result is unlikely to induce more than a courteous smirk.
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