Police Adjective (Politist, adj.)

Miami Beach Cinematheque. Feb 26th through 28th, 2010. 9:15 p.m.

The Romanian film Police Adjective (Politist, adj.) will be screened at the Miami Beach Cinematheque on February 26th through 28th, 2010 at 9:15 p.m.

Police Adjective, like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, is a stunning example of minimalist realism in the New Romanian Cinema. Cristi is a policeman who refuses to arrest a young man who offers hash to two of his school mates. “Offering” is punished by the law. Cristi believes that the law will change, he does not want the life of a young man he considers irresponsible to be a burden on his conscience.  For his superior the word conscience has an entirely different meaning.

Director Corneliu Porumboiu previously made the ironic comedy “12:08 East of Bucharest.” Now Porumboiu takes the police procedural and crafts it into a sly commentary on the state of Romania and on the responsibilities of being a citizen. The first half of the film may bore American audiences used to the fast pace and frantic cutting of Hollywood cop films. But if you are patient, “Police, Adjective” pays off handsomely at the end. The slow early going are simply to reflect the slow, dull work that cops really have to do on stakeouts and have to suffer through pursuing a case.

Porumboiu has a wry sensibility and finds humor in one man’s quiet rebellion to authority and to a law he just doesn’t think is fair. But this is a film where a phone ringing can be the most exciting thing to happen in a scene and where the film’s final climax involves reading definitions in a dictionary (a Romanian dictionary).

Miami Beach Cinematheque
512 Española Way
Miami Beach, FL 33139
305.673.4567
www.mbcinema.com

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