14/08/2024 - Radu Jude and Christian Ferencz-Flatz’s exploration of consumerism in Romania after the 1989 revolution is an intellectual divertissement entirely made up of old ads and other TV footage

Radu Jude’s Eight Postcards from Utopia [+see also:
interview: Radu Jude, Christian Ferenc…
film profile], co-directed by Christian Ferencz-Flatz, is certainly one of a kind. In sum, it is a 71-minute audiovisual journey into the crazy world of consumerism in post-socialist Romania, made up of TV footage – mainly adverts – aired between the early 1990s and the 2010s. The picture is one of the two films helmed by veteran Romanian filmmaker Jude playing out of competition at this year’s Locarno Film Festival (the other being Sleep #2 [+see also:
film review
interview: Radu Jude, Christian Ferenc…
film profile]).

Jude and Ferencz-Flatz have divided the film into the titular eight postcards, whose ironic titles serve as loose themes to justify the montage of tons of ads, teleshopping segments and other TV footage. Among the main recurring images are banking; love and phone sex; the Dacian and Roman origins of Romanians; the tech revolution brought about by mobiles and their awful, monophonic ringtones; youth and beauty products; glossy packaging; nightmarish CGI; nonsensical transitions; and glittery on-screen texts. Particular emphasis is also placed on investment ads, a modern “gold rush” that was widespread in other post-socialist and post-Soviet countries in the 1990s – other well-known examples are Sergei Mavrodi’s MMM scam in Russia and the Ponzi scheme gone awry, which brought Albania’s economy to its knees and prompted a civil war in 1997.

Overall, the film does a fair job of intertwining images while creating surreal effects and – at times – loose satire. In fairness, some segments are more entertaining and dynamic than others, and the final section is perhaps a tad too long. The pic’s standouts include a long take showing a telemarketer looking at the camera and rehearsing different takes of the sentence, “We all strive to multiply your money,” and a long sequence depicting many ads centred on couples (often arguing or saying something cheesy), culminating in different pinnacles of idiocy and characterised by YTP-like pacing (YTP standing for YouTube Poop – namely, video mash-ups that are part of the internet’s remix subculture).

The elephant in the room when it comes to Eight Postcards from Utopia is questioning its full intelligibility outside of Romania, and the choice of programming it for an international audience such as that of Locarno. Of course, a fair dose of irony, puzzlement and fascination may remain, but many other layers of meaning will also get “lost in translation”.

That being said, Jude and Ferencz-Flatz demonstrate their vast knowledge when it comes to plumbing the very depths of Romanian television and prove themselves to be avid connoisseurs of – thankfully – long-forgotten TV moments. Whether a potential viewer will see this as a plus point to convince them to engage in this experience is entirely up to them. What we can say is that in this bizarre decoupage, there’s a good mix of “campy”, anthropological research and fun, which may entice lovers of post-socialist nostalgia and trash TV.

Eight Postcards from Utopia was produced by Romanian outfit Saga Film. Greek firm Heretic is selling the feature worldwide.