The Romanian new wave used to be a thing. Unorthodox, edgy cinema crafted by the post-Ceaucescu generation. Porumboiu along with Mungiu, Nemescu and others blazing a trail, instigating that rare occurrence of the flourishing of an urgent, national cinema. Where do these filmmakers head when the energy that drove that original wave has burnt out? In the case of Porumboiu’s La Gomera it turns out to be Singapore via the Canary Islands. Straightaway this betrays the fact that this is an international co-pro, with a budget to match. The opening of the film has the jaundiced cop, Cristi, arrive on the island of La Gomera to the backdrop of Iggy Pop’s Passenger. It’s a vigorous, confident opening, which is embellished by the charismatic Catrinel Marlon as femme fatale, Gilda. Cristi is soon being given lessons by the local gangsters in the Canary Island’s secret whistling language, which allows you to communicate via articulated whistles. This might have been a sly comment on contemporary communication practices, analogue versus digital, but the idea doesn’t really go anywhere, and neither does the film, which, for all its charm, is blighted by the curse of the comedy crime caper syndrome. Various criminals in Bucharest and La Gomera are pursued by various cops, most of them crooked. The comings and goings become less and less plausible and the energy of the opening is dissipated. It feels, with reference to the director’s earlier work, and the place he was coming from, as though the intellectual-social-political drive which fuelled his former cinema has been lost. Porumboiu is now a jobbing Euro-director. It’s not a bad job, someone’s got to do it, but the focus has gone, we’re now in strictly commercial territory, a place where the light no longer burns as bright.
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