11/07/2021 - CANNES 2021: Radu Muntean explores two contrasting worlds in his unsettling, powerful drama

Maria Popistaşu, Ilona Brezoianu and Alex Bogdan in Întregalde

Probably the best way to describe Romanian director Radu Muntean’s Întregalde [+see also:
trailer
interview: Radu Muntean
film profile], currently showing in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at Cannes, is “a subtle punch”, if you’ll allow the paradox. It would be hard to find a film that uses so many seemingly anodyne moments (some of them quite entertaining) to push the audience towards such a powerful realisation.

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Penned by Muntean together with his usual writing partners Alexandru Baciu and Răzvan Rădulescu, Întregalde (the name of a Transylvanian village, which actually means “between rivers”) centres on a group of well-to-do men and women from a big city who, every Christmas, take part in an off-road trip, carrying various essential goods to poor Transylvanian mountain villages. But what was supposed to end in a feast (we even see a hogget being purchased for dinner) turns out quite differently for three members of the group, Maria (Maria Popistaşu), Ilinca (Ilona Brezoianu) and Dan (Alex Bogdan), who happen upon Kente (non-professional actor Luca Sabin, a resident of the real-life village of Întregalde), an old man on his way to a nearby sawmill. As it’s freezing and Kente doesn’t look appropriately dressed for the weather, the trio give him a lift in their SUV, but then the vehicle gets stuck in the mud and the old man hurries away on foot...

A master of urban drama, Muntean takes quite an unexpected turn with Întregalde. It is not only the frozen, savage landscape, where the technology that we take for granted in the city seems determined to fail the three protagonists, but also the contrast between the middle-class heroes (plus their priorities) and the extreme poverty that they encounter on the mountain roads. These are two different worlds, and the big question the story asks is: which of the two benefits the most when they finally, sporadically meet? For viewers with some experience of volunteering for the less privileged, the film is deeply unsettling, as it questions the true reasons for altruism and portrays how, in most cases, the do-gooders’ acts only selfishly validate the do-gooders themselves without actually changing much for the beneficiaries.

But the most powerful layer of the film is the realisation that even the smallest decisions can have enormous consequences. What they should do in order to help old Kente is a continuous cause of fights between Maria, Ileana and Dan, and the most unsettling thing about this conflict is that all of them are right. Why should they go to great lengths to help the old man, who clearly knows the region much better than they do? The promise of a nice dinner is such a contrast to going to the effort of searching for Kente in the freezing darkness, and it is obvious what the three would prefer, but certain details we won’t reveal in this review make their choices much weightier. It is here where the film becomes truly unsettling because it shows how easy one can take the easy way out, even without thinking twice, which can have tragic consequences.

And here, much praise must go to Luca Sabin. It would have been very difficult to find a professional actor able to convey the stark contrast between Kente’s world and that of Maria, Ileana and Dan, and through this choice, Muntean truly touches on what it is like to be powerless and vulnerable to such an extent.

Întregalde was produced by Multimedia Est (Romania). Voodoo Films is in charge of the world sales. The feature will be released domestically on 6 August, after a national premiere in the Romanian Days sidebar of the 20th Transilvania Film Festival.