It’s about five minutes into Kontinental ‘25, the new film from Romanian provocateur Radu Jude, that we see the dinosaur.
There’s no warning in the preceding four minutes that a dinosaur might be imminent. We follow an older, seemingly destitute man as he wanders through the forest, collecting bottles and cans and muttering to himself. Suddenly, an enormous sauropod fills the frame. It’s fake, to be clear— an animatron, the sort they occasionally use to jazz up zoos and natural history museums for screen-addled kids. The homeless man pays it no mind, nor do the other parkgoers ambling by; it’s simply part of the landscape.
Later on, the man is in downtown Cluj, rummaging through his bags, when something bumps up against his legs. It’s another animatron; one of those awful, headless Boston Dynamics robot dogs that tech companies keep insisting are charming. The man pushes it away with his foot, then kicks it more forcefully. Then, from off camera, a passerby shouts, “Hey! Stop kicking that dog, you piece of shit!” The point is clear: as a society, we’ve come to value robots more than marginalized human beings.
The homeless man is the focus of the first several scenes in Kontinental ‘25, but he is not the main character of the film. That would be Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), the bailiff sent to evict him from the basement he’s been squatting in. Orsolya speaks to the man in soothing tones— she tried to get him an extension, and anyway here’s a brochure for a men’s hostel— even as her entourage of masked gendarmes start kicking around his stuff. She’s convinced herself that she’s one of the good ones. So she’s taken completely aback when she returns from a five minute coffee break to discover that the man has killed himself.
Needless to say, Orsolya is beside herself. She cancels a planned vacation to Greece with her husband and kids, so that she might unpack her guilt. She recounts the incident to anyone who will listen, each time expanding on the lurid details (“Tongue hanging out! Piss all over!”) while also being sure to note that she’s not legally guilty. If she’s seeking absolution, however, she never quite finds it, as each shoulder she cries on takes the opportunity to unload their own hangups. Such is the plight of the 21st century: we all see ourselves as the Main Character, no matter who else happens to be present.
Kontinental ‘25 is relatively economical by Jude’s standards, clocking in at a svelte 109 minutes (his last two, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World and his AI piss-take on Dracula, run 163 and 170, respectively). It’s also more focused, or at least less overtly nutty, than his typical fare. There are fewer wild digressions, like the glossary of terms inserted into the middle of Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn or the extended social media parodies of End of the World, and less of a sense of Brechtian remove (though Bertolt Brecht does come up in two unrelated conversations). The result is less thrillingly audacious, perhaps, than Jude’s common fare, but it’s also more digestible. If one were to introduce a neophyte to Jude’s brand of scabrous satire, this might be a good jumping-on point.
This is not to say, however, that he’s dulled his edge. Each of Orsolya’s conversations with her confidants, which play out episodically in long, unbroken takes, is something of a discrete sketch on a different form of entitlement or self-absorption. A friend uses Orsolya’s story as a springboard to describe her own conflicted feelings toward a homeless man who lives in her building’s parking garage (in an amusing bit of arthouse sniping, she condescendingly compares him to Koji Yakusho’s character from Perfect Days). Her mother goes off on a tangent which manages to take aim at both Romanian prejudice against Hungarians and at Hungarians themselves. A former student, with whom Orsolya attempts to strike up an ill-advised tryst, more or less ignores her completely, instead reciting Zen parables as if they were dirty jokes. Orsolya desperately wants validation, but how can she get it when everyone around her is basking in validation of their own?
Through it all, Jude shoots the proceedings with his trademark unflinching stare. The film seems to have been filmed on consumer-grade equipment, rendering the scenes in harsh, deliberately ugly digital (there are even periodic spasms of autofocus, as if Jude couldn’t be bothered to disable the factory settings). As in his other films, there is an almost documentary feel, as Jude captures bits of absurdity too perfect to possibly be planned; as Orsolya tearfully recounts the story to her husband, the TV silently plays an ad for McDonald’s, complete with “I’M LOVIN’ IT!” bumper. Establishing shots linger just long enough to be uncomfortable, and don’t always connect to the scene which follows. Jude’s films are edited like ransom notes, purposely assembled to appear both slapdash and menacing.
When writing about the films of Radu Jude, or any foreign language satire, I do have to claim a bit of a handicap. Much of the film’s acid is spat toward Romanian social mores, my sole source of information on which thus far is other Radu Jude films, and I am all but positive that a huge amount of the dialogue sailed over my head. I was unaware, for instance, of the tension between Romanians and Hungarians, particularly in the Transylvanian region for which Cluj serves as de facto capitol; Orsolya is Hungarian, and many of the over-the-top comments on her news story come from virulently racist Romanians. On the other hand, perhaps this material is enhanced by my outsider’s perspective; all prejudice looks silly when viewed from remove, and Jude makes it look sillier than most.
If I’m reserved in my praise of Kontinental ‘25, it’s only because it seems like a bit of a step back from Jude’s more outrageous material; he is a director and satirist incapable of subtlety, and he’s at his best when he throws the notion completely to the wind. Still, it’s a pleasure to view the work of an artist with such a singular point of view, and to engage with satire so blisteringly unsparing. There is a tendency for foreign filmmakers— Kristoffer Borgli, to take a recent example— to eventually make their way to America and adapt their viewpoint to English language material. It’s enticing to imagine what Jude might come up with in such a move, but I kind of hope he stays in Romania. They need him there, and I eagerly anticipate his next dispatch from his homeland.
A postscript: the title of Kontinental ‘25 refers to the luxury hotel slated to be built over the basement in which the homeless man ended his life. Just this week, as film critic Jessica Kiang noted on BlueSky, Andrew Tate, the loathsome manosphere influencer (and convicted human trafficker) who was so memorably lampooned by Jude in Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, put in an offer to buy a hotel in Cluj. The name of the hotel, I shit you not: The Continental. I am frankly unsure what to do with this information, but it’s clear that, as always, Radu Jude is several steps ahead of us.
Kontinental ’25
2025
dir. Radu Jude
109 min.
Screens Friday, 5/29 through Sunday, 5/31 @ Brattle Theatre – click here for showtimes and ticket info
