Probing the Body – Political and Medical (Empty) Authority in the New Romanian Cinema
Probing the Body – Political and Medical (Empty) Authority in the New Romanian Cinema

Summary/Abstract: Criticism (especially international criticism) has been quick in labelling the recent success and international recognition of several Romanian films directed by a young generation of filmmakers (Mungiu, Puiu, Porumboiu) as the Romanian “New Wave.” I am interested not in questioning the appropriateness of the syntagm but in analysing several of these films as they circle around and about “authority.” I will apply the syntagm “Romanian New Wave” as a tool of analysis, as an umbrella term underlying that which is common to the different directors as opposed to the numerous differences that (naturally) are there as well. My intention is not to uncover a common theoretical platform of these directors (criticism agrees that there is no such thing) but a certain ‘Romanian worldview’ as it emerges from the preoccupations of a generation of filmmakers, a view broken into small pieces (as against monolithic representations) easier to analyse but which always affect and reflect back at the viewer. The originality and the international appeal of these films rest on their capacity of revealing the mechanisms at work in giving and taking authority/power with a sensitivity and a realism ripened and finely tuned by the experience and the legacy of a totalitarian political and social system.

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