“A tremendously compelling and relentlessly disturbing moral fable.”

Two men find themselves in the same hospital in a small town somewhere in Romania. One is Marius, a well-respected surgeon and the chief medical officer, who has just been told some vagrants have made their way into the morgue and are demanding to speak to him, a request he has to reject due to having just started surgery. Later he discovers that it was the son of an elderly man who was recently murdered in a violent confrontation with some protesters targeting the local Roma community. The other is Ioan, a young man who discreetly asks to see a doctor, as he claims to have fallen off his bicycle and needs to be sure that there isn’t any long-term damage. The two men are also father and son, with Marius not being aware that Ioan is in the same hospital at that very moment, which is likely the reason the young man was trying to remain undetected. These are the two protagonists that serve as the narrative anchor for You Don’t Belong Here, a fascinating deconstruction of masculinity and cultural tensions written and directed by Florin Şerban. He immediately establishes himself as an essential voice in contemporary Romanian cinema with an intensely complex character-driven drama that plumbs the emotional depths of two people facing their own separate crises, not aware of how connected the two incidents are to each other until a crucial revelation brings them together and plunges them into a state of emotional despair. A brilliantly dark and unsettling depiction of the lengths to which a father will go to protect his son, but where he also discovers his own sanity eroding in the process, You Don’t Belong Here takes on a very unconventional shape and proves to be an extraordinary achievement, especially at its most harrowing and psychologically unhinged.

The more we discover of Romanian cinema, particularly this current era that some have unofficially labelled as the Second Romanian New Wave, the more it becomes clear that some of the most inventive, daring work is being done by these rambunctious filmmakers with an astonishing grasp on the collective cultural pulse. Thematically, You Don’t Belong Here is rich and evocative, touching on a number of intimidating topics that seem almost too large for its lengthy 150-minute running time (which is par for the course in this particular artistic movement), while also somehow managing to be quite intimate. At its core, this is a film about masculinity in its various forms, as presented through the protagonists’ interactions with different characters and the aftermath of these often-challenging encounters. While Ioan is still young enough that he can decide on his future, as well as navigate the consequences of his actions without being well-known, Marius is a respected member of the community who has his reputation at stake, and when they both become involved in the investigation around a tragic incident the tensions begin to flare. The film is a tale of a father and son navigating a hostile world, albeit from completely different sides of the moral aisle – one believes in the truth, the other would prefer to run away from it. It’s a provocative subject, especially when we add in discussions around cross-cultural tensions, particularly in relation to how the Roma people are perceived in these smaller communities. Thus You Don’t Belong Here takes on an entirely new meaning, which the director methodically deconstructs to create the foundation for a film that is not afraid to be challenging when it is required.

With a film as ambitious as You Don’t Belong Here, much of the impact is in the execution, which is where the film proves to be quite remarkable. There’s a quality present in a lot of contemporary Romanian cinema that can only be described as creative tediousness, where films consist of long, detailed conversations (often filmed with minimal camera movements or cuts) that bring up dozens of complex ideas. These then all intersect and become enormously compelling as a result of the audience being forced to sit and watch these scenes go from awkward, tense interactions to some of the most profound philosophical commentary we’re likely to see, because of the film’s ability to capture our attention in increasingly unorthodox ways. The events of You Don’t Belong Here don’t span longer than a couple of days, and yet by the end we feel as if we have been on an intense, lengthy journey with these characters, every aspect of their minds dissected and provoked to the point where they feel intensely familiar to us after a while. This is an astonishing power for a director to hold over the audience, but Şerban is exceptionally gifted at putting these ideas together so that it feels rich and impactful, even when we think we can predict where the film is heading. Despite being constructed as a film about a murder that is likely to go unsolved (since all the authorities have is a body with a clear cause of death – the culprit, the weapon and the motive are all unknown to them, which forms the foundation for both protagonists becoming embroiled in the investigation), the audience learns the truth very quickly. However, rather than a traditional reveal, there are subtle cues that point to Ioan’s guilt, leading to the second act that is built around seeing if he can conceal the truth from his father, who is oblivious, until a certain point. In a masterful moment of breaking with the tradition built by the film, the truth is revealed through an almost entirely wordless interaction, one of many ingenious directorial choices found throughout this film.

While audacious in approaching the film from these fascinating perspectives, the director is still aware that this is not enough to sustain his entire story, especially for a film that covers this much thematic ground. He enlists the help of two exceptionally gifted actors (as well as a strong supporting cast) to take on the parts of the main players in this story, and their work is absolutely stellar. Marius starts as a stoic man who always maintains his composure even in a complete crisis, as evidenced by his status as a respected surgeon. But is he so composed because of his line of work, or did he enter into this profession as a result of possessing the necessary emotional maturity and wisdom, which is what compels him to get to the root of the various problems that have suddenly entered his orbit? No character presented in a film with this subject matter is going to remain the same by the end, and we witness Marius gradually declining to the verge of madness. He’s brought to life on screen by Adrian Văncică, whose performance grows exponentially as the film progresses – at the start, he’s an intelligent but unremarkable person with whom the audience struggles to connect, but as the story develops his sanity deteriorates, leaving nothing but a hollow shell of a man who is gradually succumbing to his madness. It’s an astonishing performance that reaches unimaginable depths for a character who seemed so dull on the surface, proving the brilliance that can come from a perfect collaboration between the director and an actor who wholly understands the assignment. Similarly, Teodor Butănescu plays a character who is also falling into a state of existential despair, but one that comes about as a result of his own actions. You Don’t Belong Here is a story of a father and son both losing their grasp on reality, but from entirely different perspectives: one is a kind of madness set off by being forced to reckon with the consequences of your actions, the other the result of realising that your entire life was fragile and volatile, and that nothing will ever be quite the same. The actors walk this tonal tightrope exceptionally well, hammering in the coarse, complex themes with a precision that binds together the entire film and its many threads.   

You Don’t Belong Here is an incredibly effective film, and one that requires a certain amount of patience, since those who are able to handle the uncomfortable nature of this film – both the intensely difficult subject matter and the execution that veers towards the tedious – will find it extremely rewarding. What starts as a relatively simple story of a murder investigation flourishes into one of the most bleak and unsettling depictions of humanity this decade. The film posits that even the most ordinary people are capable of causing harm, and that those around them will be the ones who have to reckon with the despair of seeing someone they know (especially a family member) facing enormous consequences. It’s a difficult film on the surface, but the further we explore its many themes, the more clear its intentions become. Tonally, it follows the techniques usually associated with contemporary Romanian cinema: emotionally cold and distant, with a story that feels shrouded in a veneer of deep existentialism, occasionally punctuated by brief moments of dark humour, an intentional choice that can either break the monotony of a narrative defined by its coldness, or further consolidate how these characters have been plunged into a state of chaotic despair. The latter is most intriguing, since it builds itself around these people as they slowly lose their grasp on reality and surrender to the absurdity of the situation in which they find themselves, whether as a result of their choices or the actions of those close enough to them to create an unintended psychological complicity. Visually, the film is intentionally very drab and colourless, creating an image of the humdrum, unremarkable lives of people who exist in a world where all whimsy has been extinguished, replaced with nothing but banality and eventually profound anguish. This results in a film that is daring enough to have these difficult conversations, while also being smart enough to show the right amount of restraint, turning You Don’t Belong Here into a tremendously compelling and relentlessly disturbing moral fable that is as unsettling as it is masterful.

(c) Image copyright: Fantascope Films