The Whistlers
(Corneliu Porumboiu)
Among the Romanian New Wave filmmakers I’m familiar with - Cristian Mungiu, Radu Muntean, Cristi Puiu, etc. – it’s Corneliu Porumboiu that I have the most difficult time categorizing. The thematic, let alone the visual, throughline between 12:08 East of Bucharest, Police, Adjective, and The Treasure is indistinguishable. And something as astonishingly cool as his new film, The Whistlers, would seemingly go against the very tenets of what makes a Romanian New Wave film a Romanian New Wave film. And that’s probably what makes Porumboiu such an exciting filmmaker to begin with – no film of his is quite like the preceding one. With The Whistlers, the filmmaker has seemingly graduated from the teachings of his contemporaries, expanding his skillset with a glossy new coat of paint, finding inspiration in the likes of another master: Johnnie To.
There’s a lot of Western influences you could probably apply to The Whistlers, with names like Michael Mann and Martin Scorsese serving as likely inspiration. But if there’s a single film that The Whistlers shares a lot in common with it’s Johnnie To’s Drug War. In Porumboiu’s case, the filmmaker observes a middle-aged cop named Cristi (Vlad Ivanov), seemingly working with both a mob crew and an investigative team against that same gang. This is one of those exercises that rewards patience and attention to detail, as Porumboiu is careful not to expose his hand too early into the film. And as the jigsaw falls into place, the film’s broader aspirations seize you. I was transfixed by the procedural elements of The Whistlers, with Porumboiu balancing his brand of esoteric black humor with his clinical formalism. Compounded with his vivid love for cinema (The Whistlers offers numerous shout-outs, from scenes out of Psycho, The Third Man, and City Lights), The Whistlers is a profoundly fun film from a filmmaker who once tested the limits of his audience by having a character literally read from the dictionary.