THE TREASURE (Comoara)
CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA D: Corneliu Porumboiu. Romania/France. 89 min. Sep 15, 9:30 pm AGO Sep 17, 7:30 pm Isabel Bader Sep 20, 10 am TIFF Bell Lightbox 2. See tiff.net. Rating: NNNN
Two men search for a box of money that one of their grandfathers buried in his yard during World War II.
It’s Porumboiu’s genius to take such an unassuming premise and use it in a number of ways. On the one hand, it is a simple treasure hunt that could have been conjured up by a child. It’s also a look at life in contemporary Bucharest, with its everyday pleasures and struggles bound up in work and family.
Plus it’s an examination of the past, in which architecture, politics and economics come together in a set piece of comic mastery involving a metal detector.
Ultimately, it’s a triumph of the human spirit.
