Caini (2016)

Directed by: Bogdan Mirica | 104 minutes | drama, thriller | Actors: Dragos Bucur, Gheorghe Visu, Vlad Ivanov, Costel Cascaval, Constantin Cojocaru, Raluca Aprodu, Catalin Paraschiv, Emilian Oprea, Valeri Yordanov, Ela Ionescu, Corneliu Cozmei, Caroline Bera, Miriam Marincea, Dumitru Stegarescu, Manol G Andrei Ciopec, Marius Bardasan, Ciprian Mistreanu, Teodor Corban

It will happen to you: to inherit from your grandfather a piece of undeveloped land to hold your breath. Hundreds of kilometers from your hometown. What should you do with it? In a remote part of Romania, in the northeast, near the border with Ukraine, Roman’s grandfather owned quite a bit of land: barren grasslands, lots of shrubbery, water here and there and sandy paths. ‘Câini’, Bogdan Mirica’s feature film debut, is set in this sultry setting. He received the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for this.

The tone is immediately set in the opening scene. The camera moves slowly across the ground – at a dog’s eye level, so to speak. Occasionally we hear some buzzing and sounds of other indefinable fauna. When the image is filled with a pond with a thick layer of duckweed, it becomes spooky… Something is bubbling on the surface. Is it a frog, a fish? Before we have really seen what floats to the surface, the image has already been replaced. All we know is that it was something bloody…

In the next fragment we are introduced to the main character Roman, a man in his thirties, who has just arrived in this area and is shown around by the manager. His legacy includes not only the hundreds of acres of land, but also a lonely house in a slightly dilapidated state and a sheepdog that goes by the name ‘Police’. Roman intends to sell the land, but when strange things begin to appear – at night several cars appear on the site with headlights – that can never mean anything good – he seems to want to postpone the sale. Is he influenced by the conversation with the local police officer, who urges him not to sell? The police officer is a colorful figure with a bleak picture of the future, and the way in which he interprets ‘taking the work home’ is wonderfully macabre taken here.

Mirica stylishly mixes genres such as thriller, drama, western and film noir and largely succeeds in this. His characters are captivating, the way he places them in the story is decidedly unconventional. Three men, three different backgrounds, motives and plans for the future, that can only escalate. ‘Câini’ is continuously mysterious, with violent outbursts that you can feel coming through the constantly bubbling tension, but which nevertheless manage to surprise you. The cameraman frequently uses careful tracking shots and ‘Câini’ is reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s films here and there, because of the neatly symmetrical frames. Other influences can be recognized (Joel & Ethan Coen, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino), but Mirica definitely knows how to put his own stamp on the film. The film makes you think about crime and power relations that are rooted in generation after generation and whether you can escape them.

With ‘Câini’, the young filmmaker (1978) puts Romania back on the map and we can safely add his name to the list of Romanian directors such as Cristian Mungiu and Cristi Puiu to keep an eye on.