DVD REVIEW: IF I WANT TO WHISTLE, I WHISTLE

A scene from If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle.

While a jerk

By Don Simpson

Silviu (George Pistereanu) is an 18-year-old who has spent the last four years of his life in a ramshackle juvenile facility somewhere in the Romanian countryside. He is only a couple weeks away from freedom when his younger brother (Marian Bratu) drops by for a surprise visit with news that their absentee mother (Clara Voda) has reappeared back at home. Their mother intends to whisk Silviu’s brother off to Italy before Silviu’s release date and that plan does not bode well with Silviu. Up until this point, Silviu has built up a good reputation in prison; but a desperate urge to protect his younger brother is triggered, and Silviu begins crossing lines -- literally and figuratively -- that should never be crossed, especially if you are hoping to get out of juvie in two weeks.

Around the same time, an attractive female college student, Ana (Ada Condeescu), arrives at the prison to interview Silviu as part of a sociology research project. Silviu is instantly smitten with Ana -- so much so that he dreams of a future in which he picks up Ana from work and they fuck each other’s brains out in the car. Ah, the mind of a young romantic in love.

We learn very little of Silviu's family back-story -- and that is only during Silviu's brief yet fiery exchanges with his mother. We never learn why his mother left home many years ago or why Silviu is in prison, only that Silviu blames his mother for his current incarceration. We know that Silviu has forged his own moral compass and only abides by rules and logic that he deems worthy. As the title of the film suggests, Silviu will do what he wants when he wants to do it and Silviu throws one hell of a tantrum when things do not go his way. 

All of Silviu's choices supposedly revolve around the safety and well-being of his younger brother, but what good is Silviu's stint in juvie doing his brother? Who has been raising and caring for Silviu's brother during the last four years? And who will care for his younger brother if Silviu's sentence is lengthened for any of the risky choices that he is making? Silviu is willing to throw his own life away in order to keep his brother away from his mother, but what good would it do his younger brother to have no parent or older sibling to care for him? 

First-timewriter-director Florin Serban's adaptation of Andreea Valean's stage play is a taut and lean example of the Romanian social-realist style of filmmaking. If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle is an incredibly simple and unpretentious story, but maybe to a fault. Maybe if we knew a little more about Silviu's past and his younger brother's current situation, it would be easier to understand his motives? As it stands, Silviu comes off as a selfish, tunnel-visioned idiot who is unable to fathom the bigger picture. No matter how hard Serban tries, it will be very difficult to get an audience to sympathize with a character like Silviu.  

If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle won the Silver Bear and the Alfred Bauer Award at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival and was Romania’s official entry for the Academy Award.