OFFICIAL SELECTION – IN COMPETITION
Actor in around thirty films, playwright, director of several short films awarded at major festivals, Romanian Emanuel Parvu, 45, finds himself at Cannes in competition for his third feature film, Three kilometers to the end of the world, a sunny film, delicate and nevertheless darkened by a dirty story. At the origin: an attack occurring at the beginning of the film, which the filmmaker hides from our gaze but whose imprint is then exposed, throughout its duration, through the swollen face of the victim.
It all begins, however, with a kiss exchanged in the darkness, between two young boys, leaving a nightclub. A promise, the desire to see each other again, then the day dawns, revealing 17-year-old Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea) in full light, whose features can barely be guessed under the blood and bruises. Eyes closed, nose swollen, body bruised, the teenager explains to his parents that he was beaten by individuals, upon returning from his little night trip. He does not elaborate, but father and mother panic, demanding an investigation and that justice be done.
In this small fishing village nestled in the Danube delta, accessible only by boat, the matter should be quickly resolved. At the police station, an assault for theft is suspected, the suspicions are aimed at the sons of a local notable. As the facts seem to become clearer, a shadow forms at the same time, not a nice one (according to the community) to reveal, which will now take over the entire film.
Off-camera brutality
Dejected by his son’s aggression, the father (Bogdan Dumitrache) is now dejected by what he has just learned of the circumstances in which it occurred. Adi didn’t get beaten up for his bank card or cell phone, but because he was caught flirting with a boy. The fact reshuffles the cards, imposes the same mission on everyone: to keep it secret. What everyone is working towards with zeal. The police chief (Valeriu Andriuta) trying to settle things amicably, the parents locking their son in his room, the priest performing an exorcism session on Adi (gagged).
On paper, all these story elements evoke a violence that the film strives to soften with the grace of the locations. Wild nature with vegetation trembling in the wind, transparent light of midsummer, white houses with blue shutters: everything, in Three kilometers to the end of the world, exudes calm and gentleness. A setting popular on sunny days by tourists where people only move around on foot, where life seems still. 3 kilometers away, the land gives way to the sea, offshore, an elsewhere to which young Adi aspires, against his father’s wishes.
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