T
he whistlersfollows a police inves-
tigator (Vlad Ivanov) who ships out to
the Canary Islands and gets embroiled
in dirty business—which happens to involve a
long-distance language consisting entirely of
whistles. I talked with soft-spoken filmmaker
Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective;Infinite
Football) in Cannes, where his feature was
appearing for the first time in Competition.I understand that the idea for The Whistlers
came to you from a television show you saw
shortly after completing Police, Adjective.
Yes. Right away I was attracted by the language.
I tried to read some things about it, and I even
wrote a draft of the script, but I didn’t like it,
so I did When Evening Falls on Bucharest or
Metabolism [2013]. I wrote another draft or
two before The Treasure[2015], and I came
back to it after that. There were more realistic
[versions]—the situation was more like those
in my previous films. But I had this idea to
center on this character from Police, Adjective
10 years later—this guy who once was very
sure about everything in life but afterward is in
a mess. I wanted to make a movie about a guy
who is learning this language for a specific rea-
son, and it turns against him and becomes a
necessity. So, when I added all this up in my
mind, I decided to do flashbacks. You want the
structure to play upon this process, you know,
the learning. I wrote seven or eight drafts [in
all]. And even in the editing, I took out about a
half hour. I had other scenes that I constructed
in the editing room.This is your first full-blown genre film. What’s
been your relationship with genre cinema,
and what drew you to it now?I saw noir films in the ’90s on TV and, after
that, when I was in school. And when I decided
to do this film, I said, my characters are always
role-playing, double-crossing—I will watch
[the older films] again. So I watched The Big
Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, all
the noirs—Notorious. I took a lot of pleasure in
that, like when you play with toys when you are
a kid. And I said, okay, the next step is to get
this distance at the same time—to do it through
mise en scène, not to be realistic. I also watched
The Man Who Wasn’t There andNo Country for
Old Men, and I saw a few neo-noirs.You credit Arantxa Etcheverria Porumboiu as
artistic director on the film.
Yes! My wife. She’s a painter, and we also
worked together on The Treasure. She coordi-
nates the costumes and the set design. She
came up with this idea that each chapter
would mark a character in another color,
because at the end of the day it’s a journey of
the main character. She helped me a lot with
doing this type of coordination, with the
dresses worn by Gilda [played by Catrinel
Marlon], for example. Anyway, Arantxa is
much better in image culture than me.Is this film a new way forward for you? With
Metabolism, you poked fun at your own
style, and other Romanian filmmakers, and
this film is not in that style at all.
I don’t know, because this [style] comes with
the subject. Maybe I’ll make a musical. I wanted
to make one for a long time, after Police, Adjec-
tive, but I never got there. Next time!Jordan Cronkis a critic and programmer based
in Los Angeles.PEEVISH
Ruination
On the eve of the Cannes pre-
miere of Once Upon a Time...
in Hollywood, Quentin Taran-
tino implored the press not
to give away the surprises of
his latest film. “I only ask that
everyone avoids revealing any-
thing that would prevent later
audiences from experiencing
the film in the same way,” he
wrote, in a statement that—
like most statements made by
anyone these days—seemed
perfectly reasonable to some
and monstrously presumptu-
ous to others. The debate over
so-called spoilers is hardly
new, but what apparently ran-
kled was the director intimat-
ing that there’s no appropriate
or delicate way to delve into a
film’s plot specifics with any
care or justification. But this is
the kind of peevish situation
where nobody really wins.
Some might argue that if a
movie doesn’t hold up on its
own once narrative elements
have been divulged, perhaps
there’s not much there—but
doesn’t that view devalue the
centrality of plotting in classi-
cal storytelling? It’s presump-
tuous either way, really: to
assume readers don’t mind
having plots “given away” is
the flip side of assuming that
everyone holds the linearity
of narrative in sanctity. Per-
haps, though, in a moment
when critical currency relies
on a kind of social media–
honed glibness and spoiler-
averse fandom becomes
desperately aggressive, writ-
ers of long-form essays don’t
necessarily like being asked
to evasively skate around a
film’s center. You can always
read the article, you know,
afterseeing the movie.
“There were more [realistic] versions—the situation was more like those in my previous films. But I had this
idea to center on this character from Police, Adjective10 years later—this guy who was very sure about every-
thing in life, but afterward is in a mess.”
10 | FILMCOMMENT| July-August 2019
DIRECTIONS/By Jordan CronkCracking the Code
Romanian puzzler Corneliu Porumboiu delights in deceit
with the island crime yarn The Whistlers