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‘Kontinental ’25’ Review: Radu Jude Plays It Straight but Retains His Bite in a Scorching Moral Parable
While toning down the avant-garde experimentation of his recent works, Radu Jude still brings a dark absurdist edge to his latest, 'Kontinental '25.'
It’s an image that encapsulates the friction between comedy and tragedy, the banal and the bizarre, the real and the artificial, that powers Radu Jude ‘s extraordinary new film “Kontinental ’25.” In it, the prolific Romanian writer-director dials back the heightened gonzo experimentation of his recent work to reflect the world as it is, which still permits ample room for the inexplicable. A chance encounter with delivery rider Fred (Adonis Tanta, in a kinetic, focus-pulling turn) is more stimulating: A former student from her previous job as a law professor, he responds so laterally to her trauma, with a mixture of cod zen philosophy and irreverent nihilism, that she’s briefly pulled out of her self-pity. As ever in Jude’s work, “Kontinental ’25” is rich in playful connections to all manner of other texts, including a patchwork of classic films referenced less obviously than “Europe ’51.” There’s a witty structural nod to “Psycho,” with its jarring shift in character focus that also teasingly positions Orsolya as a murderer, while she briefly happens upon the savage 1945 noir “Detour” on TV, a very different tale of strangulation and tortured conscience.
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