‘The Oak’ (NR)

The absurdist realism of Lucian Pintilie's "The Oak" is no doubt explained by his conviction that the 12 Circles of Hell had nothing on Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu. After more than 20 years in exile, the Romanian director went home after the 1989 overthrow of Ceausescu's communist regime and created a parable about his country's uncertain future by setting his story in the immediate past.

Nela (Maia Morgenstern) is first encountered in a squalid flat in a rundown Bucharest housing project, listlessly watching reels of childhood movies while the body of her just-deceased father begins to cool off. The images flickering on the wall -- their own ghosts of Christmases past -- suggest an idealized happiness, albeit with an undercurrent of fear and intimidation. It turns out the father she apparently idolized was a onetime honcho in the secret police. But nothing about his life seems to match her memory -- and as the film unfolds, the truth about Nela's father (and, quite obviously, Romania) proves progressively unsettling.

When Nela tries to donate her father's body to a medical college, she's told his body has already deteriorated too much to serve any purpose, and in any case, there are no refrigerators to keep the body. She cremates him and keeps the ashes handy -- in a Nescafe jar. Although she starts off with the mad belligerence of Robert De Niro in "Raging Bull," Nela soon adopts a wry, fatalistic outlook as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

Since Pintilies doesn't mind obvious metaphors, it's not surprising that Nela's journey proves difficult. On her way to a teaching job in a rural town, her train is invaded by Gypsies, loutish workers and a priest whose jealous wife gives him dirty underwear ("so that I am ashamed to undress") before its route ends at a flooded-out bridge.

Soon after, Nela is gang-raped and further roughened by unsympathetic police procedures, before her luck turns in the form of a doctor, Mitica (Razvan Vasilescu), a sardonic F. Murray Abraham look-alike whose anti-authoritarian spirit is akin to her own. Mitica and Nela are obvious soul mates and potential cellmates.

Their first outing is like rockets going off -- literally, as they stumble into a nighttime military exercise. The field commanders promptly stop the faux battle and schmooze, just one in a series of absurd encounters with a political gang that couldn't govern straight in a country in which incompetence and corruption are the norm. Even the secret police turn out to be bumbling comrades.

But "The Oak" is most engaging when it focuses on the possibly redemptive relationship between Nela and Mitica. When they bury her father's ashes under a giant oak, it's a symbol of hope in a barren landscape.

Shot in bleak black-and-white, "The Oak" is a classic Eastern European fable, its caustic, surreal satire served straight up. At the same time, it has a passionate momentum and the energy of spiritual release. There is no happy ending, only a sense of new beginnings in which Nela (and Romania) must become illusionless.

"The Oak" is unrated, in Romanian with English subtitles.