Review: POLICE, ADJECTIVE

POLICE, ADJECTIVE is one of those films we refer to as a slow burn, a movie that is more about what is percolating underneath than on the surface.  To note, not a whole lot happens on that surface, and the film rides that edge between tedium of interest with a certain level of threat of toppling over.  It never does, though, and, thanks in large part to the direction by Corneliu Porumboiu and the lead performance from Dragos Bucur, the film ends up being an intriguing study of the way one man’s world works even if he doesn’t fully understand it.

Bucur plays Cristi, a Romanian police officer set with the assignment of following a young man who may or may not be a drug dealer.  Cristi soon comes to his own conclusions as to the boy’s innocence, and his interests in another boy, the one who served as informant on the first boy, begin to rise.  Cristi begins following the second boy, never fully sure as to what he is going to find, but definite in the moral path he has chosen.  The authorities in charge of the investigation may have other ideas on Cristi’s beliefs.

The slow movement of the film’s pace isn’t necessarily given to a meticulous nature.  Porumboiu’s direction is solid to say the very least, and the gray, flushed out color in every shot brings the city setting to an almost lifeless level.  This heightens the sense of Cristi’s inactivity, the tedious task he is set with in standing on sidewalks and watching a group of teenagers from afar.  Porumboiu never pulls away from this, and the film very nearly suffers for it.  Even if we understand the point the director is making here, it doesn’t necessarily give way to intrigue in the narrative.

Even Cristi’s home life is flooded with dormancy, and, while Cristi’s wife, played by Irina Saulescu, views this as a contemplative state of being, Cristi seems bored and unmoved.  As he sits and eats dinner after a long day of skulking through the city streets, Cristi’s wife listens not once or twice but three times to a song about beauty in correlation.  Cristi doesn’t understand this, and no amount of explanation from her on what the song means to her will make him understand.  It isn’t that he is consciously thick-headed.  He is just a character who has difficulty seeing things any other way than what he knows of the world.

Cristi just touches on the surface of being a very tragic character, someone whose world and those in charge of it seem to be turning in on him without much he can do about it.  Bringing this leveled character to sympathetic life is no small feat, and it’s one Bucur pulls off in spades.  He appears in every scene, and most of them involve menial tasks that could very easily cause some actors to balk at the monotony of it all.  Bucur dives headlong into the role.  He never gives any insinuation that either he or Cristi is bored, and that goes a long way in keeping the same feeling from the audience.  Cristi has a job to do, even if that job at the present moment is sipping a cup of tea while looking distantly across an empty street.  Bucur has a job to do, keeping us interested in both Cristi and his job at hand.  Both end up doing just that.  You will be amazed at how much this actor does with so little.

And, in the end, that is what POLICE, ADJECTIVE is really all about, doing much with what little it has to offer.  There are deep-seeded meanings hidden throughout, some a little more heavy handed than others.  A finale involving the police chief and a dictionary might not be as exciting as a car chase through an airport, but it gets the job Porumboiu had at hand done.  Ultimately, the film is about understanding, maybe not knowing the answer to every question that comes across your way but understanding what that answer is.

In that way, POLICE, ADJECTIVE is much like A SERIOUS MAN, a film that probably handles the same, underlying message with a bit more fervor and, ultimately, a lot more interest.  As admirable and as eloquent a message as the one Porumboiu has to deliver here, the narrative and drive in his film is nearly non-existent.  You may find much interest in one man’s longing gaze at a world he doesn’t fully understand, but don’t expect much more in the way of intrigue and suspense than what is found in a casual saunter down a sidewalk.

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars