E pericoloso sporgersi

E pericoloso sporgersiⁱ is a Romanian film. Made by Romanians, spoken in Romanian, it has absolutely nothing to do with the inset to the left, though it would love to - it is after all made by the sort of Romanians who think it dreadfully clever to name it in Italian (at the time Trilema not having been invented yet, it seems all sorts of titular ghidusii passed for fresher and cleverer than could ever be the case). The expression references the gramatically dubious string pasted on a metal plate inside each compartment of each car of each Romanian train, warning unpretentious native readers of Russian and German along with locals and imagined Italians against the dangers of bending over.

These same people see nothing wrong with centering an entire film around an anonymous French waitressⁱⁱ. They are not necessarily wrong - while the woman's credits include some brief on-screen nudity once seven years prior and nothing else, the pressure for "not Romanian" put on the market by Romanians at the timeⁱⁱⁱ logically resulted in the reuse of decade-stale sloppy seconds on the transparent basis of the oh-so-foreignly-exotic-and-therefore-good name. Nae Caranfil really wanted to put Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Banana Fanna Popesca the Third in the first line of the credits of his movie - but Dottie being not yet born, pseudonyms not being yet invented and titular ghidusii not yet made available as a conceptual category by Trilema, he ended up stuck with this :

The film is notable for average Romanians on the basis all stale old crap is notable to stale old people : it was fresh back when they were, it was new back when they were, it reminds them of their youth, that time when suckage could be allocated to youth itself, rather to their personal, private, wholly-owned if publically repudiated (always and methodically) shortcomings, inadequacies, warts &all. The film is also notable for the Romanian elite on the basis of the best known depiction of a "loser fight" in all cinematic history. Poate vrei sa chem patrula!^iv

The film might also be notable for foreigners intent on penetrating the thick mists of "collapsing empire" as it historically happened, because it is deeply authentic. The ugly, uniform clothes^v, the ambiguity of what "your park" means in a small town, the bar that has no drinks to sell^vi, the actor that pretends to be a lady killer but spends most all his nights in bed with another man (no homo!), then can't actually get it up on the once-in-a-lifetime occasion when he finally gets the gumption to TALK TO A GIRL!!11 (on the basis of thinking, wrongly, that she had been leaving him numerous love letters - yes, quite exactly this juvenile!) yet nevertheless pretends like "you know me - aim, shoot, kill!" to his bedsharing friend (no homo!) who idem pretends to have gone out with "a tall blonde girl" that was really - his friend's jealous wife. That had been sending the notes, yes, to "prove it" and is leaving for Canada, and won't have as much as a thumb of either idiot - these and more, so very much more are part of the package. Coming to an empty supermarket near you soon enough.

As I've previously pointed out - Romanians don't like to remember where they began. As I'm pointing out now - you don't like to foresee where you'll end up. I'm sure there's a hierarchy to be constructed out of this collection of "various" slime, and I'm sure there's very reasonable ways to go about it : you're better than them, right ?

Good for you. E pericoloso sporgersi.

1. 1993, by Nae Caranfil, with Nathalie Bonnifay, George Alexandru, Marius Stanescu. [↩]
2. Here's some reference :

   Présentation de la société MADAME NATHALIE BONNIFAY

   MADAME NATHALIE BONNIFAY, affaire personnelle commerçant est en activité depuis 17 ans. Implantée à SAINTE MAXIME (83120), elle est spécialisée dans le secteur d'activité du commerce de détail de biens d'occasion en magasin.

   Depuis le : Février 2011 Fermé le : 01-04-2014
   SIRET 41986931800040
   Adresse 4 RUE DES BELGES - 83120 SAINTE MAXIME
   Activité Commerce de détail de biens d'occasion en magasin (4779Z)

   Depuis le : 09-12-2003
   SIRET 41986931800032
   Adresse Ecoles - 83580 GASSIN

   [↩]

3. You have no fucking idea. The first, the paramount, often the only question that needed answering in regards to any item was, "da-i romaneasca ?" ie, "but is it Romanian-made ?". That was it, all of it.

   Don't worry that you missed out on the lulz that time. You'll get a taste of it soon enough. [↩]

4. The nerdy, eyeglass-adorned runt of the troop goes awol to meet some exploitative teenager who graciously allows him to do her Analysis II homework and then leaves indignant when he asks her to join him at the regiment's clandestine liberation party "so his colleagues can meet her". He actually says this with a straight face, to some girl he's not even fucked, let alone taken on nude walks around town etc. Some local, idem eyeglass-adorned, idem runt of his class pretender to the hand of the same damsel ambushes him in the (abandoned ? no, that's just how Romanian trains run) car and, to quote, "O sa curga singe, sa stii!".

   The thing's hysterical, I still laugh when I see it, there's also a bridge to Reconstituirea's haunting "de ce-ai dat, ma!" that as far as I know nobody wrote about or even noticed because Romania is a place without culture and so on. [↩]

5. Soldiers, yes, students - also! Imagine that, keeping a seventeen year old girl in uniform at all her social calls! What sort of force do you think you'd need ?

   Whatever you think, you're exaggerating. No, not even a tenth, not even a thousandth, don't even necessarily have to beat her. There's nothing quite as fragile as the immutable. [↩]

6. "You're in the wrong shop, mister. This is a fishmonger's, we don't have fish here. They don't have meat at the butcher's two doors down." [↩]