Fascists, Stalinists, dissidents and spies, all aboard the same train making its way across Central Europe, while Hitler is at the gates of France, Stalin has very recently carried out his Great Purge and Italian communists are being persecuted by Mussolini’s political police. A nightmare journey forms the focus of Trieste director Gianluca Minucci’s debut feature film Europa centrale, which was presented in competition at the 42nd Torino Film Festival and shot inside Budapest’s Railway Museum in original 1920s and ‘30s carriages, as well as at Budapest-Keleti Station in the Hungarian capital.

It’s April 1940, and the grand ideologies of the twentieth century (Fascism and Stalinist communism) are polarising and dividing the region, while the political atmosphere is one of the most violent and distressing in history. A man and a woman (Paolo Pierobon and Catherine Bertoni De Laet) are on a journey to complete a delicate mission for the Comintern, unwittingly sharing a train with a suspected spy who’s tasked with hunting down “enemies of the people”, an expression which, in Stalinist jargon, applies to anyone who opposes the Soviet regime, including the party’s own comrades. Meanwhile, sounds of fascists singing reach their ears from the other carriages, where another couple diametrically opposed to the former (Tommaso Ragno and Matilde Vigna) are busy discussing political allegiances and strategies. These two forms of totalitarianism cross paths on this train, resulting in a tense face-off, revealing equal levels of irrationality, violence and hysteria. The cast also stars youngster Angelica Kazankova (previously seen in Orlando [+lee también:
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Q&A: László Nemes
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The elegant, period train carriages in which the action unfolds and the original score composed by Poland’s Zbigniew Preisner (Krzysztof Kieslowski’s multi-award-winning, long-term collaborator who created the music for the Three Colours trilogy), enriched with choirs, the voice of Polish soprano Edyta Krzemień, and Carlo Rinaldi’s sophisticated photography, playing out against a hot-cold palette of reds and pale blues, all combine to create a highly refined “metaphysical kammerspiel”. The style is reminiscent of expressionist cinema, the camera fixed to the characters’ faces, sometimes deforming them and ultimately heightening the sense of claustrophobia and paranoia. Ian Degrassi’s frenetic editing creates a hallucinogenic air, while Thomas Giorgi’s sound design emphasises the train’s continual clatter. It’s all incredibly effective, technically speaking, but the script penned by the director in league with Patrick Karlsen (a researcher at the University of Trieste, specialising in international communism and political cultures in twentieth century Europe) is cold and uninspiring, the dialogue is pompous and often cryptic, the acting is very theatrical, and the dreamlike-metaphorical interludes feel a little forced. It’s clear that Minucci, having worked in music videos and commercials in the past, knows how to direct a visually captivating film, but the risk here is that once you take away the form, there isn’t too much that remains, narratively speaking, and this flaw is further entrenched by archetypal and contrived characters.

Europa centrale was produced by Danubio Film, Wildside, and M74 (Italy) in collaboration with RAI Cinema.