Three Kilometres to the End of the World

Institutional corruption has been a centerpiece in Romanian film, especially over the past two decades. It’s no surprise then that Emanuel Parvu‘s Three Kilometers to the End of the World is driven by that narrative even when it’s not the most compelling part of the story.

The accomplished third film from Emanuel Parvu, Three Kilometers To The End Of The World is a disaster unfolding in slow motion. Superbly acted and deliberately paced, the film is a compulsive account of the shattering of a family, and of a life changed forever.

A tough, sinewy drama about a whole community that wants to look away from others’ differences and its own culpability.

The feature, Parvu’s third, blends suspenseful procedural with family drama but is missing a key point of view: That of the victim, whose assault is a Trojan horse into the film’s more macro interest in how bigotry and conformity entwine, and how emotionally repressed adults deal with teen homosexuality when it hits close to home.

For all its cool, compelling proficiency, there’s little about the film that feels idiosyncratic, either stylistically or in its surface-level human portraiture.

The ending is a bit flat and anti-climactic.

The conflict is pretty obvious and the film’s naturalistic shooting style can’t take it to another symbolic level, so as drama, what you see is what you get.