Director – Radu Jude – 2025 – Romania – Cert. 15 – 109m
****
Although operating within the bounds of the law, a bailiff is smitten with guilt and remorse for the effect of her job on a ‘client’– out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 31st
Carrying large bags, he scavenges at the bases of tree trunks in the woodlands, swearing profusely when his foot goes a foot in to the stream when he tries to fill his water bottle. In a bizarre nod to the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) – or more likely those briefly seen in The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011), he rests beside a dimetrodon sculpture then smokes a cigarette by a dilophosaurus. He rides a ski lift, passes a father and small son on their bikes on a footbridge, downs his packed lunch with vodka on a river bridge. He hangs around cafes asking for either work or five lei. He says “fuck you” after the woman offering him an early Sunday morning cleaning job has left. He gets hassled by a robot dog. He returns to his boiler room home.
While he sleeps, the bailiff Mrs Orsolya Ionescu (Eszter Tompa) knocks on his door, gendarmes in tow, to evict him, Ion (Gabriel Spahiu). He negotiates an hour alone to pack his stuff during which, while we are presented on the screen with the bailiff letter explaining what is due to occur, *** SPOILER ALERT ***, we hear him strangle himself using some wire and a drawer handle. *** SPOILER ALERT ENDS ***
When she and the gendarmes return to the boiler room, it’s all over.
She makes a habit of sending money to various good causes, perhaps as a means to salve her conscience. Her work colleagues are sympathetic; after all, the job of bailiff is not without its challenges. She tells a friend about it. In her reasonably comfortable home, she takes a nightcap and channel hops between a film noir and archive footage of the Hindenberg airship on fire.
The next day, she walks through the woodland and looks at the dinosaurs. She recites the Lord’s Prayer, including (as written on the English subtitles) the couplet, “forgive us our debts / as we forgive our debtors”. She is supposed to be going on holiday with husband and kids to Greece, but she can’t face it and has them go without her. Her husband is less than enthusiastic, as he was looking forward to lots of sex with her.
While the family are away, She visits her mum (Annamária Biluska), and leaves after an argument about Hungarian PM Victor Orban, who Orsolya derides as a Putin apologist. (Although resident in Romania, her family are Hungarian.) Now, she not only feels bad about the dead man, but also about arguing with her mother.
At a car park, she runs into Fred (Adonis Tanta), a former law student from her teaching days as a professor. He is working as a delivery boy, with a big “I am Romanian” sign on his backpack since he feels that this will earn him sympathy from fellow Romanian motorists who might otherwise hassle him from their cars believing him an immigrant. He bemoans the housing situation for ordinary people, complaining that how blocks of flats are being crammed together like they are in China.
At home, she sleeps – until rudely wakened by one of the kids’ toys, a singing chicken. On impulse, she phones Fred and arranges to meet him for a drink. It turns out he does an entertaining line in Zen anecdotes, which he says are the one thing that keep him going. One thing leads to another, and they head into the darkness of the park… Near her driveway, coming home, she throws up uncontrollably.
She spends time talking with her priest Father Serban (Serban Pavlu) about her remorse and guilt for the man who died. After some frank and, hopefully, helpful, in-depth spiritual discussion, he says the Lord’s Prayer with her. In line with an earlier conversation with Fred, we are presented with images of flats which are, as he put it, crammed together like in China. Then we see bigger houses, and gated estates and, finally, a cemetery situated near what appears to be a castle.
After the sex tape teacher whose behaviour threatens her job in Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021) and the under pressure production assistant of Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (2023), Radu Jude presents another working woman, this time a practising Christian whose career would appear to be at odds with the most fundamental tenets of her faith (“love one another”).
The Post-Christian West is a hard world, and, like Fred taking on a delivery boy job after university, people do what they have to get by. Or perhaps, as in the case of the man at the start, later revealed to be a former athlete who wasn’t looked after by the State after his career fell apart, they do what they have to but it doesn’t work out and they don’t get by.
I have no idea whether or not Radu Jude would label himself Christian or religious – regardless, he has created a compassionate and highly effective, warts and all portrait or a person of faith living in a culture and a job which seem very far away from Christian idealism. Whatever else this film achieves, it understands that tension. Much as It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946) starts and ends with a Christian ritual (prayer) and The Third Man (Carol Reed, screenplay Graham Greene, 1949) starts and ends with a Christian ritual (a funeral), Kontinenal ‘25, which it doesn’t quite bookend its religious ritual in the same way, has the Lord’s Prayer at its centre.
A riff on Europe ’51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952), this might feel a little more restrained than Radu Jude’s previous two films, but he’s lost none of his scabrous humour here. And there are places in which it completely lets rip.
Kontinental ‘25 is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, October 31st.
Trailer: