From the archive: "California Dreamin' (Endless)"

The title of California Dreamin' (Endless) pertains to one of the great bittersweet pop songs, of course - Wong Kar-Wai understood as much while making his modern classic Chung King Express - but there's an equal weight of sadness behind that bracketed subtitle, a better translation of which might have been "unfinished". California Dreamin''s director Cristian Nemescu died, aged just 27, in a car crash in August 2006, while completing post-production; the film has been released as it stood, by way of a memorial to the filmmaker, yet watching it is far from the morbid experience you might imagine: part-sociopolitical epic, part-Ealing comedy, Nemescu's first and only feature fair bursts at the seams with messy, glorious life.

The year is 1999: a train of American soldiers escorting NATO equipment on its way to Kosovo is approaching the small Romanian village of Capalnita, expecting easy passage. They have, however, picked the wrong day for that. The train soon comes to a grinding halt, and the troops find themselves caught up in, among other issues, an ongoing labour dispute, the desire of a teenage girl to get out from under the thumb of her obstructive, anti-American stationmaster father, and the local mayor's plans to commemorate the village's anniversary. How Nemescu would have proceeded with this material is a moot point, but he might have trimmed something further off the two-and-a-half-hour running time (perhaps the monochrome flashbacks to the bombing of Capalnita in May 1944), or finessed the last-reel's abrupt shift into tragedy.

Yet this cut is distinguished by its sheer expansiveness, and Nemescu's ability to see all sides in the stand-off: geeks and marines, village elders and flighty schoolgirls alike. These vast reserves of empathy and generosity become most apparent in the director's fondness for gatherings - parties, meals, protest meetings, ad hoc polyglot conferences, those events that throw people up against one another - but also in the film's surprise appearances (a replica Eiffel Tower; a Romanian Elvis impersonator; Armand Assante, doing his best work for years as the frustrated buzzcut in charge of the troops), its nose bleeds, bureaucratic tangles and power outages. UK audiences have already been wowed by one outstanding Romanian film over the past twelve months (4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days), and warmed to the droll wit of another (12:08 East of Bucharest). Nemescu's talent was still unruly and instinctive, it's clear - but dare I suggest that California Dreamin', being the Romanian Magnolia or Underground, is livelier, even more cinematic, and more purely pleasurable than either of the above? (And it wasn't even finished.)

(August 2008)

California Dreamin' screens on Channel 4 on Monday at 2am; 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days screens on the same channel tonight at 1am.