If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (2010)

A visual artist knows that adding a little dot of light in the iris could change the whole portrait or even ruin the initial intention. Not adding the right dot, could have the same effect. Finding THAT balance, something needed in everything we do! That balance is written all over this movie! One reviewer from Romania is fed up with "movies about low-end society family problems". I don't know if Romanians make only such movies but this one is certainly not about Romania. And here the balance I was talking about becomes clear: a simple, personal tragedy may look unimportant to others but to the one who is tormented by it, it becomes life itself. The whole movie is feeding on this sentence, if I may say so. It dictates the filming and editing style (kudos for editing!), the choice of characters, dialog (probably improvised) and everything else. The movie is quiet (almost no soundtrack, very long minutes of no dialog, long takes) and yet the tension and ugliness of the personal horror could deafen someone. The hand held camera is also barely noticeable (someone was complaining about it), far from a Dogma head ache. This slight shake is a reminder the story is not a studio pose but a live action. The theme could be illustrated in many other ways, and it's been done before, probably because the theme is so human and unfortunately forever recurrent. But what impressed me the most is the movie as a whole. The film maker, if I can make him "responsible" for the result, must be a very elegant man, in terms of manners. A man that doesn't shout out his empathy but presents it on a silver tray. Bravo!

How far you can you go recruiting on-the-scene actors? Director Danny Boyle tried to use real drug addicts in Granton, Edinburgh, when he started making Trainspotting. Until crew were physically threatened and told to provide hard drugs or else. Tarantino took on ex-criminal Ed Bunker ('Mr Blue') to give Reservoir Dogs an authentic look. But assembling a cast from real convicts? Which is what director Florin Serban does in If I Want to Whistle I Whistle.Although violence, if it occurs, does happen with lightning realism, it's the psychological threat, and switching convincingly from innocent charm to frightening killer, which portrays the crim's survival instincts so much more effectively.Our story centres around a youth who blames his whorish mother for a bad upbringing. He wants two things just now in life. To save a sibling (whom he raised for eight years) from his own dissolute fate; and maybe to enjoy the real company of a sweet and attractive young prison trainee. To be 'normal.' To get married or sit in freedom with a beautiful girl enjoying a coffee on the outside. Good impulses you might think. But the excessive, violent and life-threatening means that this youngster might go to in achieving them challenges our sympathies.Serban adapted a theatre play, incorporating elements in an acting workshop at Minors' and Youth Penitentiaries in Romania over a couple of months. "The most important things that we kept were the spirit and attitude of the inmates, the bold, uncompromising, somehow childish way of thinking and jumping into action without caring too much for the consequences. The determination of reaching a goal no matter what it takes to get there." Even his two main leads are new to acting and learn on the job – remarkable for such impressive performances.Eighteen-year-old Chiscan has initial warmth that makes you notice him in a crowd. A charismatic but tough cookie, holding his own to get on with the other inmates. A four year sentence should end in 15 days if he stays out of trouble. Not long enough to prevent his brother from being taken abroad. Meanwhile, he must negotiate blackmail threats from other inmates to which his imminent release makes him vulnerable. A low level of threat pervades the film till hell kicks loose. We wonder when it will erupt. When it does so, it happens without warning and not the way we expect.The absence of distracting background music and sincere performances help to make this film very engaging and watchable. The plot remains continuously unpredictable. An appearance among the staff of Ana, trainee and sociology student, adds more to the mix than men left unfazed by teenage hormones. We sense a physical attraction that could go horribly wrong. Our emotional allegiance shifts as the film gathers pace like gears crashing without a clutch. Everyone has faults, staff and prisoners. I look for the person I can most identify as 'normal.' Like Ana (professionally and morally), it's as if I want mentally to encourage good threads within someone – but protected from errors of judgement.The lasting fascination of If I Want to Whistle I Whistle is seeing into the mind of someone in this way. Someone who can summon lightning reflexes. Display real or threatened extreme brutality. Become horrifically highly focused to achieve a result, however crazy. The movie won a Silver Bear at this year's (2010) prestigious Berlin International Film Festival. Pistireanu George, who plays Chiscan Silviu, had his first chance to act and equipped himself prodigiously (He has since become a first year student at the National University of Theatre and Film from Bucharest.) Florin Serban plans to open an acting school for people who never had anything to do with acting. "For somebody who has only heard that they are good at nothing and less than a dog in the street, it's a huge thing to realize that he can engage an audience with his simple presence, with one smile, one gesture and that he can make 200 people laugh or shiver at once." He believes deeply in acting as a healing process. "I imagine a place where people can act out their inner demons and explore places that can only be dreamt of." The film is low budget one and to an extent experimental. It suffers from being art-house niche and not being able to tackle themes in a more universal manner. But at the end you feel you have gone away with real insights into the mind of dangerous young offenders.

First of all let me destroy a wrong perception: this is not a movie about Romania or about the Romanian society. People should stop thinking like Iliescu that all Romanian movies with bad things happening are a critique to the society (Iliescu prohibited in the 90 Rona Hartner from entering Romania and her movie Gadjo Dilo). There are a lot of prison movies American, Russian or from other parts that treat the sociological aspect of imprisonment, but this is not one of them.This movie is just a portrait of a drama. The main character is a forced to grow adolescent who knows nothing about the society and is sentenced to in-adaptability. His only connections with the world, thin threads of dreams that he hangs on without even knowing why, are his brother that he is trying to protect even without any resources, and his unfulfilled and destined to die love for Ana. This kid probably knows he has no future and this eruption of violence is just the inevitable. As inevitable as his permanence in the only system that integrates him. Who knows, if this would not have happen he would have done other stuff to stay inside. In an ocean of solitude he got his 5 minutes date with the girl with whom doesn't shares not even the taste of a coffee.

I don't usually write movie reviews, but I was so impressed after watching that I couldn't stand some of the bad reviews that were written here. This movie is indeed not for everyone. But that's the whole point of it and what brings value to it. If you were expecting some afternoon fun maybe you were watching the wrong movie. I don't like all those Romanians who are not confident about their own identity and keep bragging about the Romanian movie "industry". This movie proves that we can still make good movies on a low budget. Even if the storyline may have been a bit exaggerated the director has made an excellent portrait of Romanian prisons and of the drama that goes with it. The "reality" is "straigh in your face" and that's what I was expecting from it. The end is unexpected and fresh.