It would seem that a mosaic structure driven by the perspectives of multiple characters is something of a trend in contemporary Romanian cinema. Recently, it served to portray the historical moment of the 1989 Revolution from different points of view, like in Tudor Giurgiu’s Freedom [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Tudor Giurgiu e Cecilia St…
scheda film] (2023), or the prologue to it, like in Bogdan Mureşanu’s The New Year That Never Came [+leggi anche:
recensione
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intervista: Bogdan Mureşanu
scheda film] (2024). Igor Cobileanski’s Comatogen stands slightly apart since the Moldavia-born Romanian filmmaker aims to capture a piece of ordinary, contemporary life. The film premiered at the Transylvania International Film Festival and was screened recently at the European Film Festival Palić in its Parallels and Encounters section.

Forty-something-year-old nurse Alina (Daniela Nane, glimpsed in Ana Maria Comanescu’s Horia [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ana-Maria Comănescu
scheda film]) gets a job offer she cannot refuse: she will take extra care for the comatose patient Klaus (veteran actor Gheorghe Visu) for the extra money paid by his daughter Mihaela (Ada Lupu, in her second collaboration with Cobileanski). On the home front, she still supports her twenty-something-year-old son Radu (Theodor Soptelea) who seems to be down on his luck regarding job opportunities. Novelty comes on the level of her private life, as she reconnects with her high school friend Pavel (Andrei Aradits) and starts a relationship with him. That also serves as an opportunity to take care of Radu, as Pavel has a real estate agency that might need a new recruit and Radu seems fit for the job. However, a case of stolen envelope reveals a not-so-carefully kept secret and leads to more and more grave ethical dilemmas, as we learn that the world, after, revolves around money as well as personal agendas powered by “the things people want to hear” – in other words, lies.

In the first and longest part which serves as exposition, we see events from Alina’s perspective. Those of others – Radu, Pavel and Mihaela – come in the subsequent, shorter chapters. Whatever information the viewers glean constantly gets challenged and updated by new findings and revelations. The result is a perpetually shifting perspective, requiring the viewer's attention and an investment that keeps the ethical apparatus ready to pass and overturn judgements. This approach might recall Akira Kurosawa’s classic Rashomon (1950), but in the script written by the filmmaker together with Alin Boeru, and in Cobileanski’s interpretation of it, it turns out to be more akin to Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997), flavoured with some specifically Romanian social realism and the Romanian New Wave poetics of long takes that are either static or executed in a hand-held mode by cinematographer Cristian Gugu.

In the end, although Comatogen might not be as groundbreaking or deep as its synopsis suggested, it certainly packs a punch. Its main strength remains the filmmaker’s finely calibrated work with his actors who are, depending on the chapter, pulled into the spotlight or sent to the background, having to play their characters differently in different sections of the movie. With this approach, Cobileanski achieves an “everyman” effect for each of the key characters and creates the feeling that we recognise them and can identify with them and the situations they get into. If catching and keeping our attention and engagement were Igor Cobileanski’s primary goals with Comatogen, he certainly reached them.

Comatogen is a Romanian production by Quantum Media Creative and OWH Studio.