Reenactment (Reconstituirea)

Directed by Lucian Pintilie, 1968, 100 min

Pulled from theaters after two weeks and banned for the following 22 years, during which Lucian Pintilie himself took up exile in France, Reenactment riled the authorities because of the jaundiced eye it cast upon Romanian society in the early years of Ceauşescu’s reign, though it’s easy to imagine the Communist Party apparatchiks being even more taken aback by this film’s skeptical attitude toward documentary reality and objective truth. The premise is simple enough: Following a drunken bar brawl, the two young men who started the fight are recruited to restage their actions for a state-sponsored “instructional film for young people” about the dangers of drinking. A portly district attorney in a white summer suit arrives to supervise the proceedings. Complications ranging from the absurd to the tragic ensue, while the line between fact and fiction becomes as muddy as the rain-soaked ground upon which the main characters tussle. Fresh from his equally impressive 1965 debut feature, Sunday at Six, Pintilie, then 35, was clearly awash in the convention-shattering fervor that was erupting in filmmaking all across Europe. Seen today, his films serve as a bridge from one Romanian New Wave to another. – Scott Foundas, LA Weekly