Philosophical musings and police procedure combine in this thoughtful outing from Corneliu Porumboiu...

Multiple prize winning Romanian director, Corneliu Porumboiu, picked up the Camera D'Or for his first feature, 12:08 East Of Bucharest and has now won the Cannes Jury Prize for his latest project Police, Adjective.

Foot Tennis-playing plain clothes policeman Cristi is personally preoccupied by a drugs investigation and as a result hasn't changed his jumper for four days. Having followed teenager, Victor, for over a week, he must prove Victor is supplying friends with drugs after his squealer friend, Alex, alerts the police.

With middle class parents both working in a dairy as manager and accountant, Victor has previously led a clean life, and Cristi's surveillance and “pursuit reports” reveal nothing but discarded joint ends. Keen to follow the squealer and find out why he is betraying his friend, Cristi dodges his boss and ties to avoid planning a “sting operation”: “I'm convinced in a few years the law will change - I won't have that kid on my conscience.”

Walking the gloomy streets, distant camera work follows Cristi, reflecting his own lonely surveillance operation as he wanders a graffiti-covered city and lurks in the background of dingy flat hallways and stairwells. Police, Adjective is light on dialogue and heavy on detail and atmosphere. The first five minutes lacks any dialogue at all, and the film can be broken into two halves – almost silent surveillance followed by theological narrative.

What dialogue there is often full of subtle wit and absurdity, best exemplified in two distinctive scenes exploring language. A home scene involving Cristi and his wife Anco's discussion of the lyrics of a Mirabela Dauer song is possibly the funniest as literalist Cristi attacks its lyrics: “What would the field be without the flower? The sea without the sun?...Life goes on”, immediately retaliating with “Can it go backwards? What would a toothbrush be without toothpaste?” The irony of the song contrasts with the drudgery of real life and, alongside the mealtime negative pre-nominal adjective discussion, sets up the penultimate memorable battle of words.

Eventually face to face with the Captain, Cristi is told he's “being ridiculous” and forced to define conscience: “Conscience is something inside of me that stops me doing something bad that afterwards I'd regret.” The Captain's interest in “Dialectics” leads to dictionary definitions of “conscience”, “moral”, “law” and “police” being sought in order to force Cristi to reassess his vocation and conscience.

Police, Adjective is a slow-moving low key film full of static long shots and silences, highlighting amplified sounding background noise. Through Cristi, a young policeman losing faith in the system, Porumboiu explores the absurdity of life and bravely approaches the police/crime genre from a new angle, showing the mundane reality of low-level police cases and the paper work that comes with them. A stark contrast to the Die Hards and CSIs, Police, Adjective won't be to all tastes and is a film that needs mulling over to fully appreciate.

Director/writer: Corneliu Porumboiu
Release Date: 1 October 2010
Running Time: 113 mins
Certificate: 12A
Starring: Dragos Bucur, Vlad Ivanov, Ion Stoica, Irina Saulescu

Police, Adjective is released in the UK on Friday 1st October

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE HELP SUPPORT OUR SITE, AT NO COST WITH ONE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK 'LIKE' BUTTON BELOW: