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THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU
Directed by: Cristi Puiu.
Produced by: Alexandru Munteanu.
Written by: Cristi Puiu & Razvan Radulescu.
Director of Photography: Oleg Mutu.
Edited by: Dana Bunescu.
Music by: Andreea Paduraru.
Released by: Tartan.
Language: Romanian with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Romania. 154 min. Rated: R.
With: Ion Fiscuteanu & Luminita Gheorghiu.

There’s no getting around it, this dark comedy is as grim as its title (which is not exactly cryptic). Going on 63, Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu) claims to have stomach pains and a headache for four days. A widower, he lives alone, sharing his squalid apartment with three cats, all oblivious to his pain. Sipping an alcoholic mixture of caramel and vanilla doesn’t offer relief. When he knocks on his neighbor’s door for medication, he nearly knocks the married couple over with his breath. (And one gets the sense that they have heard Lazarescu’s litany of ailments before.) Finally, Mioara (Luminita Gheorghiu), a paramedic, arrives, and in one scene that goes on for nearly 10 minutes, she examines and questions her patient with the neighbors chirping in, concluding he may have cancer. An hour into the film, Mioara and Lazarescu’s journey begins (but not before Lazarescu complains that the ambulance is too small): the quest for a hospital that will accept this high-maintenance patient on a night when a deadly auto accident has flooded the hospitals with the injured.

It’s fitting that director Christi Puiu’s fictional vérité won acclaim at last year’s Cannes, the same year his kindred spirits, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, won the Golden Palm for L’Enfant. Shot on digital video and frequently in close-ups, this uncompromisingly intimate film turns into an epic, and not only for its two-and-a-half hour length. Tension increases as Lazarescu’s condition deteriorates, Mioara has to pull strings and jump through hoops, and still no hospital will admit him.

A broader and pessimistic picture of a generation fissure emerges, in addition to an impersonal, if not callous, health care system. It’s no accident that both Lazarescu and Mioara came of age during the Communist era. At age 57, she’s the object of scorn and ridicule by younger doctors and nurses, the post-Ceausescu generation. After Mioara has been referred to yet another hospital, a willowy and well-coiffed nurse is offended when Mioara reiterates another doctor’s prognosis for Lazarescu; she won’t be told what to do and certainly not by a paramedic. Admittedly a heavy drinker, Lazarescu is mocked throughout, even by the steadfast Mioara – a scolding doctor calls him a pig for diverting his attention from those who are really sick.

Unlike L'Enfant or the Dardennes’ The Son, each scene has an undeviating thrust. Not a line of the pungent dialogue is wasted. Beneath the quasi-documentary veneer lies a well-written screenplay. What really makes the film stand out is the actors’ exactitude. With single-shot scenes lasting sometimes for minutes on end, the large cast’s consistency is the film’s strength. Kent Turner
April 26, 2006