The neo-realism in Romanian cinema is put to tepid use in Corneliu Porumboiu “The Whistlers,” a dark comedy noir which can’t go past its one original idea. The film’s soundtrack blasts Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” as we are introduced to Cristi (Vlad Ivanova), a cop who’s in over his head with the mob and, after being invited by the beautiful Gilda (Catrinel Marlon) and a gang of criminals, must now learn to “speak” Silbo, a centuries-old whistling language from the island of La Gomera. The goal is to bust out an old accomplice before he rats out what he knows about Cristi to the police. Plot-wise, it is remarkably all over the place, with a Mamet-like desire to have its characters double-cross each other. Porumboiu divides his script into color-coded chapters, each named after a key character, but scarcely revealing anything about them. The first is titled Gilda, named after this movie’s femme fatale and Cristi’s old flame, any further shades to the Rita Hayworth movie classic are not done by accident. Although the film can be. scarcely, funny a times, it cannot transcend its one-note idea. Porumboiu seems to think his puzzle can be successful if he continues to knot it in complications. In the end, “The Whistlers” can’t really find any sort of coherence to the themes and obsessions Porumboiu is trying to tell on-screen, it doesn’t help that this gangster yarn has none of the gut-punch effects a crime drama should have, instead opting for satirical innocuousness. Oddly enough, what turns out to be the film’s best moments are the whistling scenes, including a fantastic sequence set amidst the Gomera mountains, where Cristi’s newly-acquired whistling skills are used in a sort of triangular translation exercise. [C]
“The Whistlers” premiered at Cannes Film Festival and opens on February 28.