Facets' Lucian Pintilie Retrospective Too Good to Miss

By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on May 3, 2012 9:20PM

For something so acerbically observant of its time and place (mid-sixties Romania under the shadow of Ceausescu's spreading wings), Lucian Pintilie's The Reenactment seems way ahead of its time. The tale of two teenagers involved in a drunken brawl and sentenced by a magistrate to re-enact their crime for for an educational film on the dangers of alcohol is told in a style that presages the mockumentary features that made Christopher Guest a cult legend, won The Office every accolade critics were legally permitted to dispense and has now occupied the very heart of mainstream American comedy in Modern Family.

Like Polanski's Knife in the Water it is through a bristling, tour-de-force exploitation of a limited setting and few characters that The Reenactment achieves its power. The film's oblique barbs at the absurdities of the totalitarian state soon led to Pintilie's ostracization, banishment and finally exile. With a celebrated run as a theater director under his belt, Pintilie made his first film, Sunday at 6 in 1965, which only baffled the censors. Four years later, The Reenactment, now considered perhaps the greatest Romanian film, was denounced by Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime as "having triggered an unpatriotic feeling in the Romanian cinema." It would be two decades before he was permitted to make another film in his homeland.

The Reenactment is the opening night screening of the first complete Lucian Pintilie Retrospective, at Facets from May 4 to 13. This program had its U.S. Premiere in March at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Facets is the only scheduled stop we are aware of.

This comprehensive program also offers American audiences, and this chance to sample Mr Pintilie's highly-respected early films as well as his more recent films, such as Niki and Flo and new prints of The Oak and Too Late, is a rare thing indeed.

The Reenactment screens Friday, May 4 at 7 p.m. at the Facets Cinémathèque, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. University of Chicago Professor Thomas Pavel will introduce the film, which will play twice more during the Lucian Pintilie Retrospective. For a full schedule or to buy tickets online, visit the Facets website.