Cannes 2022: “R.M.N”, Cristian Munghiu passes our primitive impulses to scanner

The Romanian filmmaker, Palme d’Or in 2007, probe the soul of the inhabitants of a village of Transylvania against the backdrop of racism and pauperization.

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Return of Romania, prodigal in talent, in the Cannes competition with Cristian Munghiu, filmmaker who, it must be believed, invented a system of magnetization of prestigious prices, between the Palme d’Or in 2007 (4 months , 3 weeks, 2 days), the price of the scenario and the female interpretation in 2012 (beyond the hills), and the prize for staging in 2016 (baccalaureate). For those who have seen these titles, Mongghiu’s taste for social realism, the frequent inspiration of various facts, the ability to transform the document into a moral fable, the conception into a “Dardenian” word of his cinema, makes no mystery . R.M.N., which is his sixth feature film in twenty years of career, surabonde in the matter.

The film, which is confronted with populist regression and the rise of intolerance in the heart of Europe, is very dark. He starts on a shot. Matthias, whose size reminds that of brown bear, is a worker on a sheep slaughter chain in Germany. He is called “dirty gypsy” by a colleague. The blow leaves direct, spreads the insultor in the glass debris. Matthias goes to the Englishman, crosses the border, returns to his village in Transylvania, an undoubtedly the most multiethnic region of Romania, where Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, Roma and some extra-European immigrant workers. /p>

This saying, we are already at the heart of the film. Where we first learn that Matthias is not a Gitan, but that everyone in his village can be considered as such by the neighboring community, in competition from nationalities which are giving themselves there and in the impoverishment of the economy that strikes the most disadvantaged strata of the population.

The film thus intertwins two sons to weave its intrigue. The first concerns Mathias, struggling with the disenchantment of his wife, the silence of his young Radu son who one morning returned from the forest, seized by a vision of horror, the illness of his old father, as well as the resumption From a passion with a former lover now divorced, CSILLA, who has become manager of an industrial bakery which is the only dynamic village company.

extraordinary sequence of twenty minutes

The second thread is due to the racist community inflammation arouses the hiring of three Sri Lankan bakers in the village, so many positions that have not found takers from the premises. Particularly fueled by the Magyare community of origin, with the blessing of the priest, a sudden reflux of the Middle Ages thus jumps to you in the face, emanating in particular from an extraordinary sequence of twenty minutes relating the holding of a municipal council on The question.

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/Media reports.