A film whose retro village look aptly captures the isolated peace of rural life, Three Kilometers to the End of the World soon flips the coin to show the narrow prejudice of such places.
Behind the idyll of the summertime delta, where the Danube flows into the Black Sea and tourists wander in from the cities, there flourishes homophobia of the most primitive kind. It is in this intersection of old and modern cultures that third-time Romanian director Emanuel Parvu sets the story of Adi, his parents and their small-minded community.
Romania has something of a spotty record on promoting LGBT rights, though it has fully decriminalized homosexuality in the last two decades and passed laws against homophobic hate crimes and gender discrimination in general. There are even queer film and culture festivals like Gay Film Nights and Art200. More is the wonder (but is it really?) that in the conservative town where Adi grew up with his fisherman father Dragoi (Bogdan Dumitrache) and religious mom Maria (Laura Vasiliu), people are not as broad-minded as the average viewer of this film or the sophisticated Cannes competition audiences before whom this small-scale, socially correct drama is, rather surprisingly, premiering.
The story is disarmingly simple and straightforward, though it tries hard to entangle itself in legal complications. Played with modesty and reserve by Ciprian Chiujdea, Adi is a happy, well-adjusted youth who studies in the city and only visits his doting parents (he’s an only child) on summer vacations. He spends most of the time hanging out with Ilinka, apparently a childhood friend. One night, after walking home in the company of a young man from Bucharest, he is ferociously attacked by two young local boys and beaten up. As they later explain to the sheriff, they had observed him kissing the tourist goodnight at the door of his lodgings, which they felt justified a good bruising.
At first Adi’s parents take their battered son’s part, shepherding him to the police station to make a complaint and get a medical exam, but things take a sickening turn when the attackers reveal what they have seen. Is it the truth? The beginning of a noir is here, but it is quickly short-circuited as general repugnance against the victim coalesces among the adults in the know: the parents, the two boys and their influential father who Dragoi owes money to, and the chief of police (a nicely balanced, mixed-motives performance from Valeriu Andriuta). Plus his deputies, and the local grey-bearded priest, played with maddening self-righteousness by Adrian Titieni. In short, way too many people to keep a secret in a small town where everybody knows everybody. As the policeman warns Dragoi, he won’t be able to show his face if anyone talks.
The conflict is pretty obvious and the film’s naturalistic shooting style can’t take it to another symbolic level, so as drama, what you see is what you get. The original mugging takes place off camera, but in a particularly brutal and humiliating scene, Adi is stripped to his underwear by his parents and tied up in his room, while the priest burns incense and reads prayers with to the Heavenly Doctor to take away the boy’s “disease”.
Parvu directs his actors well while the screenplay, cowritten with producer Miruna Berescu, gradually tightens around them as the legal, moral and emotional consequences of the characters’ actions become apparent. What is striking, at least to Western audiences, is how carefully the film tiptoes around the idea of homosexuality – the word is never pronounced in the film, just euphemisms and “you know what I mean” and “don’t make me say it.” One wonders if this is a ploy to broaden its audience appeal, but it seems quaintly outdated in today’s world.
Director: Emanuel Parvu
Screenwriters: Emanuel Parvu, Miruna Berescu
Cast: Ciprian Chiujdea, Bogdan Dumitrache, Laura Vasiliu, Adrian Titieni, Valeriu Andriuta, Ingrid Berescu
Producer: Miruna Berescu
Cinematography: Silviu Stavila
Editing: Mircea Olteanu
Production design: Bogdan Ionescu
Sound: Mirel Cristea, Alexandru Dumitru
Production companies: FamArt Production (Romania), National Cinema Center (Romania)
World Sales: Goodfellas
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competing)
In Romanian
105 minutes
