A scene from Intregalde (Tudor Panduru/Grasshopper Film)

“This can’t be happening,” mutters a young woman as she stands beside a stalled car. But it has. The car has sunk in the cold mud, the twilight temperature is dropping, and she and her friends—frenemies, really—are in for a long night in the deep Romanian sticks. All attempts to set a bad situation right actually make a predicament worse in Radu Munteanu’s mordant comedy, named after a nearby village that feels impossible to reach. Viewers will be amused and discomfited as Munteanu sends his frustrated characters careening into the dark, both metaphorically and for real.

Confident Dan (Alex Bogdan) and flirtatious Ilinca (Ilona Brezoianu) sit in the front of a car on its way to distribute charity packages to families in the countryside north of Bucharest. Something of a third wheel, Maria (Maria Popistasu) sits a little anxiously in the back. She’s the one who suggests that the group offer a ride to a wizened, meek-looking old man named Kente (Luca Sabin) in peasant garb standing by the roadside. He leads them on a detour down the remote winding road where they promptly get stuck in a rut. The befuddled old man sets out for a sawmill and leaves his new citified friends to their own devices.

They include haplessly lighting out on foot for destinations that may not exist, the inept driving of the car deeper into immobility, and the discovery that their urban skills (and smartphones) are useless in a rural setting. Left alone when Dan treks away to get help, the women are jarred by an encounter with a tough Rroma local and his son: the father displays casual homophobia and racism as he slags off the old man they earlier picked up. By the time Dan gets back, with darkness encroaching and snow about to fall, nerves are getting frayed. When their elderly comrade rejoins them, Maria insists on keeping Kente in the car with them instead of letting him wander the roads. She’s not ready for the unfortunate and mortifying accident that’s about to happen, a slide from Green Acres to the grotesque.

The group’s cringeworthy, farcical flailing is given snap by writing more skillful than it looks. Tight camerawork in the car and handheld sallies in the forest underline the sense of confinement in the middle of nowhere. As the situation plummets south, each person descends closer to a worst self. Gallant Dan grows petty and snarling, sexy Ilinca self-absorbed, and Maria irritatingly stubborn. In the way of cornered people, they point the finger at others within their range: “They’re all drunk here, didn’t you notice?” snaps Ilinca. “You’re lucky they didn’t sodomize you!” sneers Dan about the Rroma pair. 

On a trip that started as a giving mission, this team has not given much. Intregalde satirizes the huge difference between Romania’s poorer, more isolated citizens and Bucharest’s new bourgeoisie with humor, but also an even hand. A later encounter with some of the reviled townspeople will reveal a certain brusque, down-to-earth tenderness that surfaces in an unexpected way. Some of the visitors witness it, but may not have absorbed it. The film leaves the question open, an unexpectedly light after a long dark night in the woods.