"Police, Adjective" (2009) is a sparse, slow−moving, socially critical comedic drama. While "comedy" may not generally be associated with those words, "Police, Adjective" astutely combines extreme deadpan with elements of a detective film to tell the story of a young police officer assigned to gather evidence to arrest a hash−smoking high school student.
The strange combination of rigid procedural steps and subtle visual and linguistic puns allows "Police, Adjective" to break out of traditional genre tropes associated with cop movies and make some pointed observations about life in contemporary Romania.
The director, Corneliu Porumboiu, chooses to remain stylistically distanced from the narrative throughout the film. Rather than try to create tension through the breakneck pace that so often characterizes crime flicks, Porumboiu films the story at what is, at times, an excruciatingly slow pace, giving attention to every detail about his protagonist's day−to−day surveillance of his suspect.
The meticulousness with which the young policeman, Cristi (Dragos Bucur), goes about his investigation is meant not only to show the precision with which he executes his work, but also to mirror and comment on the stringent laws that Romanian society demands that its citizens follow.
Cristi himself is constantly struggling against both the incompetence of his fellow police officers and the mindset held by his superiors that the law must be followed to the last word. The student about whom Cristi is gathering information is soon revealed to be a harmless kid relaxing with his friends — not quite the supplier that Cristi's boss believes him to be. The dichotomy between real−life observation and the infallible law delivers the film's central problem, and the one that torments Cristi.
The protagonist is newly married and has just returned from a honeymoon in Prague, where hashish is smoked openly in the streets. After watching the student and pondering the ramifications of his investigation, Cristi arrives at a moral dilemma.
Cristi knows through his own observations that the student is harmless, and that in Romania's quickly developing society, the law will probably be more permissive in a few years' time. On the other hand, he feels pressure from his captain to unquestioningly follow his orders and arrest the kid — a decision that Cristi believes will ruin the adolescent's life.
While Cristi goes about his paperwork and investigation, it becomes clear that the tension between signifiers and their true meaning is an issue that occupies more than just the police in Romania. Cristi and his wife discuss the meaning behind ambiguous pop song lyrics, and he bemoans the fact that words are not taken by their literal, most simple meaning.
The film's title hints at this questioning of word meaning, and it comes back again at the conclusion. Cristi's boss makes him look up dictionary definitions for words like "conscience" and "police," which are decidedly different from Cristi's personal interpretations of them. Cristi's final decision regarding his orders reveals much about both his character and the society in which he is forced to live.
An underlying current of satire runs through "Police, Adjective," and the film contains small but calculated bits of humor. In his endless tracking of the student, Cristi becomes a source of visual comedy, stepping in and out of frame, appearing unexpectedly from behind cars and walls and even poking his head out from behind a pillar.
Small, realistic moments occur when Cristi reveals his frustration with his boring job in amusing double−takes and confused glances. All of the subtle, personal humor helps align the audience with Cristi's point of view, so that when the conclusion comes, it smarts.
As its title suggests, "Police, Adjective" is concerned with words and the way that their definitions can morph and vary. Cristi's struggles and the subversive comedic bits spotting the film seem to be a personal protest against a society that refuses to use its imagination — and one that won't let its conscience get the better of it.
