La Gomera (The Whistlers) review – thrilling Romanian corrupt-cop noir

A bent detective becomes entangled in the crimes he's investigating in Corneliu Porumboiu's nifty, twisty drama

Corneliu Porumboiu is the film-maker whose movies such as Police, Adjective (2009) gave festival audiences a taste for his brand of bone-dry black comedy satirising bureaucracy and corruption in post-CeauETMescu Romania. Now he has put together this very watchable, rather exciting noir suspense thriller that has playful echoes of Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa and even Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai.

Veteran Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov is Cristi, a corrupt Bucharest cop who has become involved in the drug-money-laundering setup he has been investigating. Huge amounts of cash are hidden in mattresses for export; these find their way to the island of La Gomera in the Canaries, where the bad guys are headquartered. Cristi has discovered that his superiors (themselves hardly impervious to bribes) suspect him and have placed secret surveillance cameras in his apartment. He knows exactly where they are but must carry on as normal.

The fateful day comes when the drug lord's beautiful girlfriend, Gilda (Catrinel Marlon), comes to meet Cristi. To fool the cops, she pretends to be a high-class sex worker and has sex with him in front of the secret cameras. Gilda feels vaguely affectionate and sorry for the chump but it's just business; poor Cristi, however, falls deeply in love.