Întregalde (Radu Muntean, 2021) (Patreon)

The first fifteen minutes of Întregalde, the latest from Radu Muntean, are so stuffed with activity that it's difficult to even guess what the rest of the film might hold. We open in what looks like a crowded food market, but in the course of some coordinated activity and cross-talk, we figure out what we're actually seeing. It's the organizational hub for an aid effort organized by the (unseen) mayor of Bucharest. Bundles of food are packed up to be delivered to needy homes in the outlying areas. The aid workers are mostly in their twenties and thirties, and their interactions -- usually jokey, occasionally exasperated -- indicate that this group has been working together for quite awhile. 

In the midst of the chaos, the young daughter of an aid worker finds a stray puppy and pleads with her mom to take it home. The mother says no, and directs the child to put the animal back where she found it. As we eventually learn, Muntean's decision to bring this insignificant moment out of the chaos and into focus is hardly fortuitous. It's a clue to the primary theme of Întregalde, a film that bends happenstance to the director's will in order to drive home some rather elementary moral dilemmas.

Three of the air workers pile into one delivery vehicle and head up to the mountains to dole out some parcels of Cheetos and juiceboxes. There's Dan (Alex Bogdan), who is a new father, and seems to have some romantic past with Ilinca (Ilona Brezoianu), a former party girl who has decided to become more serious in her mid-thirties. Finally, there's Maria (Maria Popistasu), a good friend of Ilinca's who doesn't seem to be as close to Dan. Out on a country road, they encounter a lost old man, Kente (Luca Sabin), who thinks the group is there to give him a ride to a sawmill in the forest, where he is supposed to meet some friends.

After some hesitation, they decide to give Kente a lift, since it is winter and the sawmill is allegedly on their way. The old man directs them to turn onto an unpaved trail, where their 4x4 gets hopelessly stuck in the mud. Disoriented, Kente walks on while Dan, Maria, and Ilinca try to summon help. The sun is going down, they're not getting many bars of cell service, and a local Romany man (Toma Cuzin) and his son (Gabor Bondi) try to pull the car out of the mud but the rope slips, sending it down a ravine.

There is the expected bickering, discomfort, and confusion over what to do. Dan goes off to find the old man, only to discover that there is no sawmill, and he has severe dementia. The primary conflict of Întregalde, apart from the trio struggling to survive until a planned morning rescue, has to do with differing opinions about how to deal with Kente. He attacked Dan with a tree branch, and so he wants nothing more to do with the guy. But Maria insists that they go and help him, since he is frail and senile and will most likely freeze to death.

So in the midst of very circumscribed crisis of weather, isolation, and inadequate tire tread, Muntean is actually providing an ironic commentary on liberal charity. These workers are charged with helping the less fortunate, but faced with a man who is a burden -- mentally ill, disoriented, incontinent -- they exude frustration. It's obvious that this theme is meant to be edifying somehow. But really it's the sort of smug cinematic gotcha! that Ruben Östlund specializes in. People are selfish when the chips are down! Humanistic fellow-feeling is a sham! From an opening that could have gone literally anywhere, Muntean chooses to follow a dead-end road, and he never really pulls Întregalde out of the ditch.