R.M.N

Directed by Cristian Mungiu

Running time: 2hrs5 | REVIEWED BY CATHERINE BRAY

R.M.N by Cristian Mungiu

I’m not sure if I’ve ever begun a review with a shout out to a film’s casting director before. That’s probably very remiss of me. But what a film with which to correct that lapse! Catalin Dordea, regular casting director for the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, is doing sterling work here in his latest, which is essentially a portrait of a fractured Romanian village in its entirety. Some characters get much more screen time than others, but this is ensemble work at its finest: over the course of two hours spent immersed in this community, you get to know the rhythms and emotions of this little town. You start to pick out faces in the crowd, and begin to perceive the invisible alliances and kinships that bind sub-sections of the village to each other, and divide others. It is a highly perceptive film, more interested in understanding than judgment. 

I don’t know if you’ve seen previous Film of the Week Nomadland, which Guy wrote about beautifully here. If I had a reservation about the way that film was constructed, it was this: Frances McDormand was a huge star giving a brilliant imitation of a regular person, but the more she was surrounded by regular people, the more this dynamic stood out to me, irrespective of how skilled her performance was. I can’t see a way around that if you’re going to cast a big Hollywood A-lister; you can’t erase the familiarity of her face versus the faces of the people around her from your brain. 

In R.M.N, some of the cast have more prior credits than others, but nobody is a Hollywood A-lister, allowing us to sink into the illusion of the village, and forget that you’re watching a pitch-perfect constructed reality. This simply wouldn’t be possible without such attentive casting. The actors are the fabric of this film, and by the time an explosive town hall meeting rolls around and unfolds in real time, I was completely under their collective spell.

R.M.N (2022) Written by Cristian Mungiu | Shot by Tudor Vladimir Panduru | Edited by Mircea Olteanu