Interview. Corneliu Porumboiu.

Before Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days took the coveted Palme d'Or at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, the declaration of a Romanian new wave seemed to rest on the singular success of Cristi Puiu's quotidien epic The Death of Mr Lazarescu," writes Jay Kuehner, introducing the latest interview up at the main site.

"Modest by design but no less ambitious in its formal conception, Corneliu Porumboiu's 2006 Camera d'Or-winning 12:08 East of Bucharest stakes out the relative calm amid the Balkan tide. Where Puiu's long day's gurney into night is indebted to ER and Eric Rohmer, as envisioned by a painter, Porumboui's droll evocation of the Romanian revolution owes something to the narrative torpor of Jarmusch and the tableaux of Vermeer."

Updated through 6/8.

Bucharest "offers a decidedly crumb's-eye view of Romanian history," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Porumboiu's film is, at first glance, as rumpled and unassuming as its weary, fatalistic inhabitants. Though it is modest, almost anecdotal, in scale, 12:08 East of Bucharest is also characterized by a precise and sneaky formal wit."

"Focusing on personal eccentricities and foibles, East of Bucharest has a sly modesty reminiscent of the long-ago Czech new wave, exhibiting a sense of film form that evokes the best of the rueful Czech comedies," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "The movie's circular structure suggests that if history is a joke, the forces that disrupt its progress are nothing short of miraculous."

Earlier: "Cannes. 12:08 East of Bucharest.," May 06.

Update, 6/7: "[W]ould that half the first features to be feted at Sundance year after year felt this conceptually and aesthetically whole," writes Jeff Reichert at indieWIRE. "Unexpectedly, and delightfully, Poromboiu uses the occasion of a two-bit civics lesson, poorly lensed by a youthful camera operator with cinematic ambitions, to spin out a droll meditation on both his chosen medium and the way history is shaped through personal reportage."

Updates, 6/8: "In my experience, Romanian films are often divided almost explicitly into a setup (which may demand patience) and a payoff (which may reward it). So it is with 12:08 East of Bucharest, in which the first half, for all its implied drollery, will do little more than make you chuckle, in a sighing, Bill Murray kind of way," writes Stuart Klawans in the Nation. But by the end, "You will laugh till the streetlights blink on again in the damp Romanian twilight."

"Porumboiu starts off making a mordant slice of life, but he gradually entwines the personal and the historical, then ends on a poignant note," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "The story and situation are slight, but in the best possible way."

In the second half, "while the performances remain sharp and funny, the visual monotony eventually becomes oppressive," writes Mike D'Angelo for Nerve. "Still, might as well jump on the Romanian bandwagon now, lest you be forced to admit in years to come that, unlike the hipsters, you didn't get the message until sometime after 12:09."

"60s Czech films like Milos Forman's The Firemen's Ball and Jiri Menzel's Larks on a String hid social critique inside a gently ironic but cutting sense of humor as a way of speaking about the failures of their nations' institutions indirectly," notes Steve Erickson for Gay City News. "Porumboiu's film implies that their sensibility has outlasted the Iron Curtain."

Posted by dwhudson at June 6, 2007 1:05 PM