CRUISING (William Friedkin, 1980)

About an undercover police attempt to identify and capture the serial killer of gay men in New York City’s s&m (sadism/masochism), b&d (bondage/dominance) and leather subcultures, William Friedkin’s soulless Cruising enraged the gay community when it was being made and is still a shallow, seedy, unpleasant “entertainment.” The undercover cop in Friedkin’s film is played by Al Pacino, whose casting will remind many viewers of his livelier undercover cop seven years earlier in Sidney Lumet’s “fact-based” Serpico. We are supposed to see Pacino’s Steve Burns in Cruising as being dangerously drawn by degrees into the nasty milieu he has entered undercover, including the mind of the murderer. In Pacino’s repressed, ambiguous performance, none of this is remotely apparent. Rather, too much weight is given to a ridiculous ending that reveals most unconvincingly that Burns angled and manipulated for the assignment, which has now led to his promotion to detective and his becoming himself the brutal slayer of a gay man.
     Friedkin’s Oscar-winning The French Connection (1971) was bad enough. Cruising is worse.

THE BALANCE (Krzysztof Zanussi, 1974)

Released in the States as A Woman’s Decision, Bilans kwartalny—literally, Quarterly Balance, a.k.a. The Balance—is writer-director Krzysztof Zanussi’s harsh, detailed portrait of life in Communist Poland.
     Marta Sieminska (Maja Komorowska, superb) is a middle-aged accountant in a state office and a union representative, in which capacity she supports a co-worker suspected of embezzlement. The film begins with a dream of freedom; gulls fly over beach and ocean at dawn as Marta’s disembodied voice is halfway between humming and singing. This ironical opening is followed by moments of morning routine inside the Sieminska apartment. Marta and Janek, an affectionate couple, both ready themselves for work as their young son readies himself for school.
     Appearances deceive. Marta feels trapped; at home and at work, Zanussi’s mise-en-scène is claustrophobic. Marta is variously accused, including by Janek, of “do-goodism,” meddling, seeking “private satisfaction.” Her alleged saintliness constantly blows up in her face. The woman accused of embezzling tells her: “It takes courage to be a little deceptive when necessary . . . [and] to sacrifice self-esteem.” The pair is discussing Marta’s adulterous affair and her desire to choose one man or the other. Her co-worker counsels Marta to keep both husband and lover. Her hospitalized mother-in-law gives her this advice: “Act as you feel, not as you think you should act.”
     The co-worker resigns under pressure, but Marta’s showdown with their boss gets her reinstated. Marta is good at what she does. She also will be getting in the department’s quarterly report on time. This competent human being takes a lover for an unaccustomed taste of freedom. Is it guilt or refreshed commitment that brings her home to Janek?
     Meanwhile, a friend of hers is planning on marrying an American just to get out of Poland. Restricted lives; constricted lives.

GADJO DILO (Tony Gatlif, 1997)

To honor the memory of his traveling ethnomusicologist father, a young Parisian, Stéphane, foot-journeys in Romania to find Nora Luca, whose singing blessed his father’s hearing toward the end. Tony Gatlif’s stubborn, colorful The Crazy Stranger begins with the boy on a frozen, snow-covered road. At night he is (mis?)taken for a godsend and appropriated by a Gypsy elder, whose grandson has been taken away by the police. Izador gives Stéphane vodka and a bed in which to sleep. When morning comes, the language and cultural barriers between the two become plain. Stéphane presses to find Nora Luca; proclaiming him “my Frenchman,” Izador tries bringing the boy into his community, which at first, however, mistakes him for being a chicken thief. On the one hand, Izador repairs Stéphane’s overworn shoes; on the other, he won’t let him go about his business. The waylaid boy falls in love with Sabina, a dancer, eventually learning that there has been no real communication, that is, understanding, between him and the Roma: a benign version of the acrimonious impasse between Roma and Romanians, who act dangerously toward the Roma, at least in part, out of fear of these presumed dangerous, “crazy” strangers.
     The details of Roma life fascinate. For instance, when a dressed-up boy approaches the father of a girl, who is dressed in her bridal gown, on the day of their wedding, the father curses the boy, threatening to kill him. It turns out that this is ritual; once the boy gives the man vodka and other gifts, he is welcomed in for the wedding ceremony.
     I was moved by the melting of the Roma’s suspiciousness toward Stéphane, their gradual welcoming him into their community. But the film especially lives in its bursts of Gypsy song and dance.