European Films

A train of US soldiers and equipment headed for Kosovo during the Kosovo War is stranded at a Romanian train station in the middle of nowhere in California Dreamin’ (Nesfarsit), the debut of Romanian director Cristian Nemescu. The 27-year-old director died in a car accident while the film was in postproduction. Presented in Cannes in the state the film was in at the time of his death, California Dreamin’ was finally awarded the top prize of the Un certain regard section, though probably more for the great film it could be rather than the 3-hour rough cut it actually is. As an unfinished film -- rather than "endless", which is what the "nesfarsit" of the title means -- it is a diamond in the rough.

 

Between the laugh-out-loud socio-political comedy A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest) and the ultra bleak abortion drama 4 luni, 3 saptamini si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) -- but two of the recent new wave of extremely high-quality films from Romania -- lies the large grey area of bleak dramas punctuated by often pitch black humour of which Moartea domnului Lazarescu (The Death of Mr Lazarescu) is the most striking example.

That tale of hospital misery might have been topped by California Dreamin’ had its director lived to reduce, adjust and properly finish his now often meandering but nevertheless captivating account of a train stranded in the wrong place and at the wrong time, setting in motion a chain of events that seems as unstoppable as the rail vehicle remains immobile.

 

In the early summer of 1999 the Kosovo War is in its last stages. Aboard a train that transports NATO equipment and army personnel through Romania on its way to the Serbian border, US army Captain Doug Jones (Armand Assante) is in charge, with Sergeant David McLaren (Jamie Elman) his reliable right hand. One of their stops is at an apparently insignificant train station not even worthy of that name in a tiny Romanian hamlet, though local station agent Doiaru (Razvan Vasilescu), hated by the villagers for his corrupt ways, might disagree.

 

Though orally authorised by Bucharest officials, Doiaru insists on receiving all the necessary export documentation on paper before letting the convoy pass. "Rules are rules" seems to be his mantra, though his own bending or clear disobedience of them in order to advance his activities as a shop keeper of products that "fell of the wagon" shows that he is really only after massaging his own ego with silly power games and filling his own purse.

 

Unfortunately, like in Lazarescu, Doiaru is not alone but part of a largely diseased system in which corruption, futile power games and the lack of people taking responsibility add up to a society in which a group of soldiers from one of the most powerful countries on earth can be stopped by a local station master at his whim. Nemescu explains everything with a visually striking shot in which a fax machine spits out page after page in an empty government office. All the pages fall down into an already overflowing open drawer beneath, to be picked up who knows when by who knows who.

 

As the hours become days, the soldiers are invited by the local mayor (Ion Sapdaru) to attend a celebration, where he tries to rally them for his cause, as much as local workers at a factory try to attract the foreigners’ attention for a proposed strike. The local girls, including the daughter of Doiaru (Maria Dinulescu) also seem rather interested in the train full of fit lonely men with barely a thing to do.

Written by the director with Catherine Linstrum and Tudor Voican, California Dreamin’ is chock-full of characters, incidents and themes, including a larger exploration of the relationship between Romania and the USA that is also explored in the film’s prologue set during WWII and the absurd Balkanesque ending. Though in the present form the film never bores, it is clearly a rough patchwork that would have benefited from a great deal of editing. The love story involving Doiaru’s daughter Monica and McLaren feels light and unfocused when compared to everything else, while many of the film’s sequences run on for longer than necessary, including party scenes set in a nearby city after a power outtage and at the mayor's improvised banquet.

 

A closing scene involving Monica and one of her classmates meeting years later now feels tagged-on. It seems to strive for the kind of poignancy a similar scene in Y tu mamá también so effortlessly achieved but here fails to shed any new light on what has gone before or offer a sense of closure. California Dreamin’ thus remains unfinished but certainly not unworthy: it offers more than enough evidence for Nemescu’s talents as a filmmaker who could have had a bright future as part of the Romanian New Wave.

 

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