The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2019)

All in all, La Gomera  really is a better title for this film. That's Porumboiu's original title, named for the name of the Canary Island where much of the film's action takes place. The Whistlers, which catchy in its own way, was a bit distracting. I kept thinking about that Jethro Tull song, or when Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) went back to his mom's house to hide some money, I reflexively thought to myself, "hey, there's Whistler's Mother." You know, stuff like that.

Having gotten that out of the way, I have to acknowledge that the title is not the only aspect of The Whistlers that prompted ambivalence. I have been running hot and cold on Porumboiu for awhile now, moderately enjoying certain of his recent films (The Treasure, Infinite Football) while others (The Second Game, When Evening Falls on Bucharest...) have left me cold. It isn't so much his narrative vs. his conceptual orientation that makes the difference, as the split above can testify. I would have to go back and rewatch them all to be certain, but I think it may have to do with Porumboiu showing us people figuring things out, as opposed to having people explain things that they already understand. 

At least that would explain my deep affinity for Police, Adjective, a film I consider his masterpiece. In that film, a cop is trying to work through the inflexibility of the law enforcement apparatus in light of a supposedly post-revolutionary society, and discovering that there wasn't as much of a revolution as he'd been led to believe. It's a study of how individual initiative is ground down in the face of bureaucratic obstinacy. 

The Whistlers comes across as somewhat arch and knowing, even if it doesn't ultimately amount to very much. It is by far Porumboiu's most conventional film in terms of pacing and découpage, so much so that a viewer would probably not guess it was by the same director as Porumboiu's previous films. This in itself is a bit disconcerting, as if formalism is a mask one dons or lowers at will, rather than a part of one's artistic identity. Nevertheless, this is a self-conscious genre riff, using an international, multilingual plot as the foundation for double-crosses, nefarious gangsters, and dangerous, duplicitous women.

Cristi is a crooked Romanian cop who has struct a deal of some sort with a criminal named Zsolt (Sabin Tambrea). Cristi will help some accomplices break Zsolt out of jail in La Gomera in exchange for €100,000. But Cristi's supervisor Magda (Rodica Lazar) already suspects him of being dirty, so his apartment is under surveillance. When he has a meet-up with one of his criminal accomplices, Gilda (Catrinel Marlon), they realize they are being watched, so she must pretend to be a high-class hooker, and screws Cristi under those pretenses. It was all business, of course, but you know how these things go. He can't get Gilda out of his system, and this will compromise his judgment later on in the game.

As Theo Panayides has pointed out, a femme fatale named "Gilda" is only one of Porumboiu's nods to movie history. In fact, there may be an entire subtext about the movies as coded language that can explain not only what we're watching, but human behavior more generally. (We could even throw opera into the equation.) But I agree with Theo: The Whistlers introduces this idea but doesn't do much of anything with it. Instead, like the "whistling language" (which I haven't even touched on, but chances are you already know about that -- everyone has mentioned it), it feels like a clever gimmick used to gussy up a stylish but ultimately rather hollow genre remix. 

At this point Porumboiu is a filmmaker who is really more interested in gamesmanship than in social statement. That's his muse to follow, but it's not of much interest to me. If he should ever decide to make another film as insightful as Police, Adjective, someone please get my attention. Just put your lips together and blow.