By Alex McPherson

Sharp, spare, and icy to the touch, director Radu Jude’s latest indictment of modern society, “Kontinental ‘25” confronts complicity and learned helplessness within a crumbling world.

Jude’s film, which takes place in modern-day Cluj-Napoca in Northwest Romania, opens in a forested park exhibit featuring animatronic dinosaurs. The unhoused Ion (Gabriel Spahiu) scrounges for scraps of food, muttering obscenities.

Wandering around the rapidly gentrifying city looking for work, and largely being met with disdain from the populace, Ion (who used to be a famous Romanian Olympic athlete before becoming injured) is losing hope. He has been squatting in the boiler room of a building that’s slated to be torn down and replaced with a hotel called the Kontinental Boutique.

Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) is well-off, married-with-children, and working as a bailiff — she’s also Hungarian, which brings with it a bunch of cultural baggage. She is set to evict Ion from the premises with the help of her ready-for-action “ninja turtles” gendarmes.

Clearly enjoying the power she has over Ion as she informs him of his imminent eviction, she gives him 20 minutes to pack his things. Ion then kills himself. Orsolya is shocked. 

Even though she constantly reminds herself and everyone she talks to that she didn’t do anything “illegal,” Orsolya feels responsible for Ion’s death. She’s forced to face reality head-on, or, at least, mope around Cluj-Napoka looking for reassurance from coworkers, friends, and family while her husband and children go on vacation.

It’s a bleak premise, rendered in darkly comic fashion, with a lead character who’s equal parts maddening and relatable as she grows increasingly desperate to soothe her guilty conscience. Thanks to Jude’s characteristically provocative and gutting eye, “Kontinental ‘25” takes aim at not only Orsolya’s hypocrisies but also our own. A

fter all, Jude posits, we are inhabitants of this doomed planet, going about our days distracting ourselves from horrors many believe are out of our control.

These are happy days, indeed, brought to life as Orsolya’s psychological wounds are papered over with self-serving arguments that prize comfort over actual reflection. Meanwhile, gentrification, economic inequality, and deep-seated prejudice run rampant throughout Cluj-Napoca. History is rewritten by the “victors,” as wars rage across the globe.

Jude, whose previous films include “Dracula,” “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” and “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” is unafraid to go for it and lean into his indulgences to show just how crazy modern life has become. “Kontinental ‘25” is no less fierce and biting at its core, but Jude takes a more social-realist approach this time around. 

Jude eschews stylistic extravagance for a stark approach that refuses to give Orsolya a heroic arc or distract from the main ideas at play — his anger and judgment practically seep off the screen. “Kontinental ‘25” is still full of acerbic wit and I-can’t-believe-they-just-said-that surprise, but the overall effect is a feeling of “tragedy of cruelty,” of how the status quo persists as time marches on.

That’s not to say the film isn’t also funny in a squirm-inducing way. “Kontinental ‘25” finds blunt ridiculousness in the matter-of-fact detachment of Orsolya’s interactions; each illuminates different ways of coping with her guilt and feelings of powerlessness.

The screenplay here is biting, harsh, and deadpan, with most conversations filmed in long-takes that let us marinate in uncomfortable silences and give us ample time to put ourselves in Orsolya’s shoes and reflect on our own place in the world. 

Do we donate to organizations about causes we care about in order to feel better about ourselves, or to actually make a difference? Do we let our prejudices and religious beliefs excuse happenings as inevitable? Do we indulge in drugs and alcohol to distract ourselves from our problems and avoid accountability? These are all questions that Orsolya grapples with, yet she is  never quite able to assuage her existential dread or “redeem” herself.

In Orsolya’s state of perpetual stasis, “Kontinental ‘25” can sometimes feel as if it’s spinning its gears along with her. The film is less a forward-moving narrative than a series of vignettes building towards, fittingly, not much at all in terms of her character. 

But Jude knows what really matters here, spending the first 20 minutes of the film solely with Ion, and ending with a heartbreaking montage of the transformation of Cluj-Napoka’s landscape. It’s the ever-present march of “development” at the expense of the vulnerable; an increasingly fragmented community that still resides under the same flag. This quietly powerful conclusion stands in contrast to the mostly empty language of the rest of the film, wordlessly conveying tragedy that will take large-scale action to reform.

Jude’s film is still definitely not for everyone; the mixture of nihilism and humanism is unusual, to say the least. It’s still a rich, confrontational text that leaves a nasty sting.

“Kontinental ’25” is a 2025 comedy drama from Romania, directed by Radu Jude and starring Eszter Tompa, Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanta, Oana Mardare, and Annamaria Biluska. It is 1 hour, 49 minutes long. It was released in the U.S. on April 3. The film will play at the Webster University Film Series April 17-19. Alex’s Grade: A-.