A good soul seeks absolution in the irreverent, savagely cynical ‘Kontinental ’25’

Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude is our modern madman and moralist, as fleet with pranks as he is steadfast in holding to account the hypocrites of the world (starting with the fault lines in his home country). Being idea-crazed and fast-moving, he’s rolled into art-house consciousness on the force of some sweeping masterpieces of sociocultural critique, namely 2021’s raw, absurd “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” and 2023’s freewheeling satire “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World.”

With his latest, “Kontinental ’25,” Jude — who also put out a coarsely wacky version of “Dracula” last year — shifts away from clownishness and toward a sterner register of concern for society. There’s still room to be a curveball-throwing punk (cue the animatronic dinosaurs or footage of the Hindenburg), but in this tale of civic guilt and capitalist injustice, he’s willing to let a more sober tone speak for his rage.

For 10 minutes we watch the daily routine of a grizzled, unhoused man (Gabriel Spahiu) who, when he isn’t collecting bottles, panhandling or scavenging, squats in the basement of a centrally located apartment building in the fast-growing Transylvanian city of Cluj. When authorities arrive to evict him, led by sympathetic bailiff Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) and a coterie of masked officers (plus the unseen hand of the corporation planning to erect a boutique hotel in the building’s place), the situation takes a grim left turn.

Though legally absolved of wrongdoing, Orsolya, a religious woman with a strong ethical sense, feels complicit in a preventable tragedy, which she realizes is all too possible when big business conspires with unfeeling government. Meanwhile, the situation is exploited by hate-filled nationalists online, ready to paint a Hungarian-born bureaucrat like her as a foreign villain.

Her stricken mood spurs her to cancel her vacation with her husband (Adrian Sitaru) and stepchildren and instead look for answers to her grief in conversations across the city with assorted confidantes: a close friend (Oana Mardare), a former student (Adonis Tanţa) who’s now a Zen-spouting delivery driver and her priest (Şerban Pavlu).

Jude loves a deep, sarcastic, wide-ranging gabfest — as do all Romanian filmmakers, it seems. And here, Orsolya’s sincere if haphazard search for understanding, visible in every fiber of Tompa’s affecting central performance, cleverly lets Jude expose the insufficiency in quick fixes. Does a donation app’s ease foster giving or create further distance? Is the gig economy a means or an end to ambition? Are religious narratives meant to spur us or breed comfort? Is Orsolya looking for real solutions or simply a way to feel better?

“Kontinental ’25” is about the heavy stuff, for sure. In the background of a bar, a poster for Roberto Rossellini’s earnest humanitarian classic “Europa ’51” is visible, Jude obviously paying homage to a classic story about a privileged woman’s crisis of charity. But Jude is more vinegary and direct about his concerns than he is melodramatic. He shot the new movie on an iPhone, for one thing, even as he questions the smartphone’s contribution to our easy disengagement with the world’s ills.

Jude is hardly precious about his craft. But that’s because he’s confident you’ll leave bursting with thoughts and feelings about the price of progress, the weight of history and the ways we struggle to do right amid so much that’s wrong. His closing images are a montage of buildings and apartment complexes, with very few humans visible. Are we looking at a vision of growth or the partitioning of community?

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