Tales from the golden age

Tales from the Golden Age (2009) is a bitter-sweet recollection of the last 15 years of Romania's Ceaucescu regime. Dubbed a "Golden Age" by the country's Communist Party, its one-party dictatorship is commemorated in the movie as a petty comic opera of a regime, an incompetent bureaucracy run by fools more silly than sinister.

The idea of dramatising five of the period's urban "legends" as short film stories originated with Cristian Mungiu. His 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days , a bleak and biting Ceaucescu-era abortion saga, wowed the international film festival circuit in 2007-8, winning three awards, including the Golden Palm, at Cannes.

Inevitably, this multi-parter is a mixed bag, mainly due to the uneven strengths and symbolisms of the five chosen "legends". End credits don't reveal which director was responsible for what chapter, and each of them has distinct styles. The first anecdote records the arrival of an official inspector ahead of a political visit to a village, and it's a charming bucolic 20-minute comedy. In the shorter second look at bureaucratic protocol, newspaper photographers must ensure that the president isn't seen to lose face. That's a cute docudrama.

The third tale is an overlong fable in which a chicken-truck driver cheats, and his life and luck could be portrayed the same ways in any regime. Similarly, the comic adventure of the greedy policeman and a pig is akin to the British farce A Private Function, an Alan Bennett satire on provincial snobbery and bureaucracy. The last tale had the strongest dramatic potential, showing post-Communist youth absorbing Western freedoms and capitalist opportunities.

Mungiu failed to develop a thread through the oddly-chosen legends. It's going to be tough for any Eastern European to create a worthy critique and memorial of their Communist regimes. An excellent model already exists : Germany's Goodbye Lenin!