Arthouse noir anyone?
"The Whistlers" was Romania’s entry for the 2020 “international film” Oscar – previously “best film in a foreign language” – and is now streaming on Curzon Home Cinema. It’s in Romanian and Spanish with English subtitles and some English – not too much English, as that would disqualify the film from the award.
"The Whistlers" is a gripping crime thriller, switching between Bucharest and the Canarian island of La Gomera (the film’s title in Romanian), famous for its whistling language. The idea is that corrupt Romanian cop Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) can learn the language so as to be able to communicate with criminals without using traceable mobile phones.
He arrives on the ferry from Tenerife and is driven to a remote mountain home where the beautiful Gilda (Catrinel Marlon) meets him, shows him round, and tells him what happened in Bucharest means nothing. In flashback, he was under surveillance and she pretended to be a “high class hooker”, performing for the hidden cameras in his flat.
The plan is to spring from prison a businessman with a sideline in money laundering. Zsolt (Sabin Tambrea) also has 30 million Euro secreted somewhere in his factory. Cristi’s boss Magda (Rodica Lazar) had expected police procedures to be bent to get Zsolt into prison in the first place, with Cristi playing the innocent unwilling to stoop to such illegality. Who’s on whose side is a recurrent problem, and a couple of the twists are in "The Usual Suspects" territory.
Paco (Agustí Villaronga) is the crime boss in La Gomera – presumably he’s not a native – and Cristi gets a crash course in how the “Silbo” language works (especially as Romanian has two extra vowels), and how to do it. In your own home, sticking your fingers in your mouth to try it would be less embarrassing than in a cinema, but perhaps not advisable with a deadly virus around.
Back in Bucharest, Cristi books a room in a hotel, called Opera, where the owner is playing Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman, and Cristi wonders if it will put people off. The hotelier says he hopes rather to educate people – but the Barcarolle duet becomes a bit of a motif for some of the plot, and a very bloody encounter for one character.
There’s a little subplot with Cristi’s mother, who has found a bag of money in her cellar – Cristi’s ill-gotten gains – and has donated it to her local church, knowing it was ill-gotten. Father Daniel offers to hear Cristi’s confession, but the money is already in the bank, and was large enough for the bank to notify the police. Actually, as Cristi has never married and his mother thinks he may be homosexual, she wants the priest to pray for him to “become normal”.
Writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu throws in some jokey references, with an American filmmaker straying into a meeting to plan the prison break – that doesn’t end well – and films playing in the background include a John Wayne Western. A disused film set provides a location for a dramatic and twisty ending, though there’s an unlikely epilogue at the Gardens by the Bay lightshow in Singapore.
The whistling comes into its own when the final arrangements for getting Zsolt free are whistled across a Bucharest housing estate. This does rely on no-one from La Gomera being in earshot, probably a safe assumption. The film was a nominee for a Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes film festival. This year’s is off, but Cannes will sponsor some releases of films, and other festivals may get together for an online film fest. Many mainstream movies that are held up now will eventually get into cinemas, but it’s films like "The Whistlers" that will most miss out on a theatrical release.
"The Whistlers" was Romania’s entry for the 2020 “international film” Oscar – previously “best film in a foreign language” – and is now streaming on Curzon Home Cinema. It’s in Romanian and Spanish with English subtitles and some English – not too much English, as that would disqualify the film from the award.
"The Whistlers" is a gripping crime thriller, switching between Bucharest and the Canarian island of La Gomera (the film’s title in Romanian), famous for its whistling language. The idea is that corrupt Romanian cop Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) can learn the language so as to be able to communicate with criminals without using traceable mobile phones.
He arrives on the ferry from Tenerife and is driven to a remote mountain home where the beautiful Gilda (Catrinel Marlon) meets him, shows him round, and tells him what happened in Bucharest means nothing. In flashback, he was under surveillance and she pretended to be a “high class hooker”, performing for the hidden cameras in his flat.
The plan is to spring from prison a businessman with a sideline in money laundering. Zsolt (Sabin Tambrea) also has 30 million Euro secreted somewhere in his factory. Cristi’s boss Magda (Rodica Lazar) had expected police procedures to be bent to get Zsolt into prison in the first place, with Cristi playing the innocent unwilling to stoop to such illegality. Who’s on whose side is a recurrent problem, and a couple of the twists are in "The Usual Suspects" territory.
Paco (Agustí Villaronga) is the crime boss in La Gomera – presumably he’s not a native – and Cristi gets a crash course in how the “Silbo” language works (especially as Romanian has two extra vowels), and how to do it. In your own home, sticking your fingers in your mouth to try it would be less embarrassing than in a cinema, but perhaps not advisable with a deadly virus around.
Back in Bucharest, Cristi books a room in a hotel, called Opera, where the owner is playing Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman, and Cristi wonders if it will put people off. The hotelier says he hopes rather to educate people – but the Barcarolle duet becomes a bit of a motif for some of the plot, and a very bloody encounter for one character.
There’s a little subplot with Cristi’s mother, who has found a bag of money in her cellar – Cristi’s ill-gotten gains – and has donated it to her local church, knowing it was ill-gotten. Father Daniel offers to hear Cristi’s confession, but the money is already in the bank, and was large enough for the bank to notify the police. Actually, as Cristi has never married and his mother thinks he may be homosexual, she wants the priest to pray for him to “become normal”.
Writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu throws in some jokey references, with an American filmmaker straying into a meeting to plan the prison break – that doesn’t end well – and films playing in the background include a John Wayne Western. A disused film set provides a location for a dramatic and twisty ending, though there’s an unlikely epilogue at the Gardens by the Bay lightshow in Singapore.
The whistling comes into its own when the final arrangements for getting Zsolt free are whistled across a Bucharest housing estate. This does rely on no-one from La Gomera being in earshot, probably a safe assumption. The film was a nominee for a Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes film festival. This year’s is off, but Cannes will sponsor some releases of films, and other festivals may get together for an online film fest. Many mainstream movies that are held up now will eventually get into cinemas, but it’s films like "The Whistlers" that will most miss out on a theatrical release.