If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (15) ***
This punchy, economical Romanian drama
establishes a strong sense of place (a young offenders’ institute in the
countryside) before gradually coming to describe the trouble its protagonist –
Silviu (George Pistereanu), a hothead with two weeks remaining on his sentence
– finds himself in. The close-knit, Dardennes-like approach, hewing squarely to
Silviu’s shoulders, catches the boy’s growing isolation from both his fellow
inmates and the world beyond the gates; it also prompts a simmering performance
from Pistereanu, forced to prove himself amid an ensemble of actual young
offenders whose roughhousing looks and sounds very much the real thing. The
stand-off that results, as Silviu finally decides to grab what he wants in
life, proves as despairing as it is tense: not for the first time, a Romanian
film shows us an individual floundering within a system from which there can be
no easy escape.
If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle opens in selected cinemas from today.
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