Marina Ashioti

It’s a brilliant showcase of both McKellen and Coel’s talents. The contrast between them is rich and layered, down to the detail of costume designer Eleanor Baker’s choice of knitwear and corduroys in warm and cool tones.

Filtering the tale through Lamia’s childlike whimsy allows the colourful, polished cinematography to sing.

To add insult to injury, just when things are finally about to get nasty, a character effectively sits us down for a tedious exposition dump that explains the whats, whys and hows of it all. It’s this very lack of trust in its viewers that comes as the film’s most upsetting development.

It’s a film that is firmly grounded in the geopolitical specificity of Cluj, exploring ethnic tensions, economic inequalities, legacies of totalitarianism, the brutality of capitalism and the destructiveness of real estate – yet it’s through this local context that Jude gets to dig deep into the contradictions of our globalised, neoliberal world as the all-pervasive cultural and moral rot continues to spread.

The tight framing ensures we never lose focus of the anxiety gnawing away at him, while small gestures of humanity are balanced against the harshest measures our punitive society can impose.

All we can do is refuse to look away. In bearing witness, we can regard the pain of others as our own.

Sebastian gradually transforms into something more substantial when reaching towards a point about the cross-generational relaying of queer histories, but ultimately is too preoccupied with constructing a shallow character study to delve into more nuanced terrain.

At least there is dedication to the spectacle of practical stunt work, owed to director Jonathan Eusebio’s background as a seasoned stunt performer.

The duo’s Indian collaborators are largely absent though, and it all comes together in a rather shallow, often frustrating attempt to bottle up a significant piece of late 20th century film history, devoid of that touch of Merchant Ivory movie magic.

The film’s spontaneous spirit is muddied by a sense that some ideas are retroactively staged . . . but what ultimately stays with you is the actor duo’s commendable ability to find inspiration and poetic gravitas in silliness, horseplay and tomfoolery, even (and especially) in the darkest of times.