California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit / Endless) (2007)

24th of August, 2006. Cristian Nemescu, a 27 years old Romanian director leaving his first feature film's post production works, get a taxi in Bucharest together with his sound engineer Andrei Toncu. A few minutes later on one of the boulevards of the capital, missing its red traffic light with 140km/hr a robust Porsche Cayenne SUV runs into their cab. Nemescu and Toncu never left that taxi, and their debut became an endless story. Literally. Irrevocably.

There are tons of articles about the rising new wave of Romanian talents (among the post-socialist countries next to the ex-Eastern Germans only they seem to succeed presenting their historical weights). After his last year's winning at Cannes Cristian Mungiu is the most known among them, but behind him there are other already proven ones (Puiu, Muntean, Porumboiu); Nemescu could have been the next one in the row... I won't mention here their merits but focus on the 'endless' California Dreamin', the film which suffers a lot from the typical problems of being somebody's debut, but at the same time which is a starting torso of a never delivered oeuvre too.

I decided not to tell anything about the story. The purpose is that the film - as we used to it watching movies coming from the Balkan - uses its story only for expressing something else, something universal, something historical, mental, sociological, something what depicts the place and the certain time. Nemescu tells a single simple, almost comedy-like story (where there is the chance of the tragedy in every minute) from 1999, but shows more about the whole problem of the region: the mentality, the communicative misunderstanding, the false hopes and ill-founded fears, the destructive powers of a misleading propaganda. As the mayor puts into words:

"The arrival of the Americans can only do us good. Because, if we get publicity, we will draw investors to our village."

... The whole politics of Eastern Europe is in this trap: people are living in some mixture of desperate beliefs and ideologically confused hopes, small-time interests. Their whole "democratization" is nothing else than their industrial and spiritual privatization. And they supposed to be happy for that to the USA. But not everybody is thinking this way. Usually these people are the victims of the US troops' short visits. Especially if they are proudly stubborn enough to face with the arrogant American military authority (its physical face (or chin:) played by Armand Assante was a perfect choice).

On the picture: Nemescu and Armand Assante

In the beginning it seems only the Romanians can't understand the way of communication with the Americans (starting to play their anthem in a sensitive military situation is such a perfect absurd joke), but later on we bitterly recognize how their "perfect", "sophisticated" - Western - communication is working. The final speech of Assante front of the village summarizes the whole contemporary mistake of the USA. It's not about that their haven't got right, it's about they can't understand that their right in other countries, cultures, historical situations and social mentalities just doesn't work. That's why they failed in Afghanistan, that's why they fail in Iraq, and that's why they will fail against East too... Their actual "peacekeeping" mission (haha) fails already in a small Romanian village (Capalnita), much earlier than entering their real destination in Kosovo. And this is where the comedy turns into tragedy...

Another 'closely watched trains' with a real Romanian Elvis. Maybe not for this latter reason but watch it, definitely.


8/10