17/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: In the best Romanian tradition, Emanuel Pârvu spins a highly sophisticated yarn in a small village in the Danube Delta where a brutal event sees diverging interests intertwined

"What would you do in my place, if your son lied to you like this?", "Who else knows?" It’s a highly detailed, in vivo case study on the micro-perimeter of a miniscule village, which is endlessly criss-crossed by a variety of characters worrying under the summer sun, that Emanuel Pârvu offers up in Three Kilometres to the End of the World [+see also:
interview: Emanuel Pârvu
film profile], which was discovered in competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and is the Romanian filmmaker’s first foray at such lofty heights, having previously turned heads with Mikado [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Emanuel Pârvu
film profile] and Meda or the Not So Bright Side of Things [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Emanuel Pârvu
film profile].

Whilst family does still play a central role in the director’s super-methodical and sophisticated psychological and filmic approach, it’s absorbed into a slightly wider context this time round (perhaps also acting as a metaphor for the general state of the country). As the story’s young protagonist and catalyst, Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea), fires at his mother: "you’re scared of what the village will say. But the village is not my family."

"Severe traumatic injury" is the conclusion of the medical examination to which Adi is subjected after being beaten up on his way home from a night out. We’re in Sfântu Gheorghe, at the heart of the Danube Delta region, where the 17-year-old bachelor who’s living and studying in the neighbouring town of Tulcea (which can only be reached by boat) has returned to spend the holidays with his parents. So what’s going on in this place where everyone knows each other inside out? Needled by Adil’s father (Bogdan Dumitrache), the prudent local police chief (Valeriu Andriuţă) leads an investigation which rapidly leads him to the son of the much-feared Zentov, whose brother-in-law has county-level responsibilities and to whom Adil’s father owes money. But most importantly, the reason for the attack is revealed: Adi kissed a tourist. It’s a revelation which completely destabilises his parents, his pious mother (Laura Vasiliu) in particular, and which catapults matters into a whole other dimension, drawing in the likes of Adil’s friend Ilinca (Ingrid Micu-Berescu), a priest (Adrian Titieni) and a child protection representative who turns up unannounced (Alina Berzunteanu)…

Depicting three days full of endless journeys by foot, and discussions in which each and every character defends and tries to impose their own viewpoint (and interests), supposedly to find the best possible solution for Adil, the film is far more than a simple denunciation of homophobia. It paints a clinical picture of a community mired in favour-based relationships ("if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours") and in a deeply rooted and toxic patriarchal culture ("I gave him life, I can kill him, but no-one else can touch him"), which only the religious authority seems capable of supplanting. Enhanced by an ensemble of highly developed shots and sequences (voiceovers, hooks, views of breathtaking exterior scenery, etc.), this incredibly meticulous spider’s web of a screenplay (written by the director in league with Miruna Berescu) is wholly in keeping with the Romanian cinema tradition with all its moral dilemmas, as epitomised by the master that is Cristian Mungiu. Ironically, however, the formal perfection of the movie lends it the inescapable air of an exercise in style.

Three Kilometres to the End of the World is produced by FAMart and is sold worldwide by Goodfellas.

(Translated from French)