‘Kontinental ‘25’ Review: Hey, Jude

Grieving about her culpability in a highly-publicized local suicide, bailiff Orsolya Ionescu (Eszter Tompa) is told repeatedly that it wasn’t her fault. By the time Orsolya seeks out a priest for consolation and wisdom towards the end of “Kontinental ‘25” (2025), her refrain that “legally, I’m not to blame” is so familiar that it’s hilarious, but humor tends to come at a cost in Radu Jude’s universe. Romanian writer/director Jude (“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”) is a keen social critic, but he’s mostly fair, blending cynicism with pragmatism and a dash of experimental flair. Jude tracks Orsolya in the aftermath of a person crisis but, not unlike Angela (the extraordinary Illinca Manolache, who makes a cameo here) in the bawdy, brilliant “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” (2023), the aim isn’t at an individual target, rather humanity writ large. And, once more, Jude connects. 

For a film that’s in constant motion, the most resonant moments of  “Kontinental ’25” are the conversations, the camera holding two people on a bench and gliding away after, resembling Ozu’s “pillow shots.” Watching and listening to Orsolya conveys her dizzying headspace and crushing guilt. So, who can relate? Naturally, she begins at home, confiding to her partner about how she’d tried so hard to help Ion (Gabriel Spahiu), a former athlete who had been living in a storage closet. Appealing to Ion, Orsolya told him that she herself had run out of options, delivering an eviction notice straight from the city, which had approved a luxury hotel (called the Kontinental) on the site where Ion slept. Naturally, when news of Ion’s grim death leaked, the Internet blows up Orsolya’s reputation, and the comments section (“Hungarian skank!”) delivers the knockout haymaker, below the belt as always.

Jude Makes a Feast of His Characters

Finding limited solace in her husband—who repeats and laughs at the trolls’ commentary, what with the specific details on how they would mangle, murder and dismember his wife—Orsolya meets a friend who offers her own experience with a homeless man in her neighborhood who had recently returned. “Sometimes I wish he would just die,” the friend says with a straight face, while holding up a photo of a family she’s supporting financially, a cursory feel-good gesture offsetting immorality and narcissism. Orsolya sends that family some money, but continues looking for any connection to shake her out of a nasty spiral. A fortuitous run-in with former student Fred (Adonis Tanta), leads to a surprising night out and, perhaps inevitably (in a Jude film), some sloppy outdoors sex. To repent, Orsolya goes to the priest, who bats away her guilt and encourages her to make more room for God. 

If “Kontinental ’25” sounds farcical: well, of course it is. But, operating at a slight remove, any day-in-the-life might seem absurd, even—or especially—to the person living it. While Jude makes a feast of these characters, their performances rise to the material, especially Tompa, harried and disappointed yet forcing herself to binge on pleasure in frantic, fleeting doses. Jude layers on hilarious character tropes that err on the right side of prototyping, and yet, because these are such full individuals, it gels effortlessly and consistently. Fred, a bike-delivery worker who spouts out Buddhist parables from memory, is goofy, but he’s genuine and believable, and he actually seems to care for his professor. That, or he just wants to show Orsolya his “horse cock.” 

On-the-Ground Realism

Since the film’s title and poster hint at Roberto Rosselini’s “Europa ‘51” (1952), Jude’s on-the-ground realism sways from straight satire, elevating these encounters to an intimacy level that’s fraught and so funny. Jude’s films are excruciatingly political, but while he keeps the action local to his native Romania, the themes are far from niche or limited. Orsolya, Angela and their ilk aren’t mere victims or villains, they’re citizens of and active participants in an insane, often senseless experiment that Jude captures and repurposes as fiction. It’s all too entertaining to be real, but Jude gives us permission to smirk and giggle because that’s what he’s doing, too. Imagine, Jude is saying, if this is the life we all lived and we had to watch a playback version of it? Yikes, call a lawyer. And stay out of the comments section. 

Radu Jude’s “Kontinental ‘25” opens in New York at Film Forum on March 27, when it also rolls out in a limited national release.