Hawaii, written and directed by Jesus del Cerro 8 out of 10

Hawaii, written and directed by Jesus del Cerro

8 out of 10

Hawaii is an interesting story about...communist Romania, the relation with the paradisical island is mentioned near the beginning.

Dragos Bucur is good as Andrei Florescu, the same is true about Andi Vasluianu as the vicious, loathsome villain, the Secret Police officer Scarlat, but Cristina Flutur as Ioana Balan was less convincing.

Granted, the role was rather difficult, complex, the woman being an agent of the Securitate - and by that, a member of something similar to the Gestapo and the KGB - and at the same time, the love interest of the hero, the Juliet if you will of this drama, which is a thriller and a love story.

Andrei Florescu is an intrepid taxi driver, one who deals in the black market, risking with that a long jail sentence in the communist days, when the dollars he transacted, the Kent cigarettes he offered for services were crimes against humanity, so to say.

Everything changes when he is asked to take a client from the Intercontinental hotel and this has a message and a chain with a cross for him, asking for a meeting to take place later.

Andrei Florescu takes Vasile Florescu with him to the meeting; the latter had tried to escape from the tyranny in a hot air balloon, years before, with two friends, one of whom has just sent the Intercontinental message.

Surprisingly – in fact, it seemed rather farfetched – they have the pleasure of meeting with the American Ambassador, although why would his Excellency want to meet with these two people is a bit difficult to guess.

Vasile Florescu has been named the inheritor of a large property in Hawaii – hence the name of the film – with thousands of hectares and a value of about three million dollars – considerable, but enough reason for the highest representative to be involved in this?

Another reason might be that Vasile could be assumed a sort of dissident, a more likely reason for an ambassador to want to communicate…

The family of Andrei is not overjoyed by the inheritance that comes with strings attached – if they claim it outside Romania, in an American embassy elsewhere, they will be able to have it.

Nonetheless, if they do not get there in this period, the Romanian communist state would come into possession – they would confiscate any such private property; they are into sharing, like their present day disciples Corbyn, Melenchon, perhaps even Sanders.

Andrei is determined to travel to Yugoslavia and then defect, but for that he needs a passport and at the office for these documents he meets Ioana Balan aka Cristina Flutur – not very suitable for this role.

She is a Secret agent, in charge with the dossier of the Florescu family, suspected of antigovernment activities or at least designs, and she meets again with the man who likes her, unaware of her occupation.

The idyll develops so much that the woman who had pledged loyalty to the state and its vicious repression machine, to which she belongs, starts to have doubts and begins to feel attached to her target.

Her superior officer is Scarlat aka the very good Andi Vasluianu – Omni present in local films – who appears to want to use his influence and authority over his subordinate to gain sexual contacts.

Is they had been mutually pleased in the past with this bond – although he is married and we could presume that this had been a case of abuse – she is not willing anymore and hence she is raped.

Ioana is a good swimmer and she wins a competition – that could have been limited to the villainous Securitate agents, but there it is – where the loving Andrei is in the audience and admiring.

The Secret agent solves the case by saying that there are no reasons to suspect that the Florescu family has nefarious plans – she cites the brother in law, who is a communist fanatic.

However, Scarlat has had other sources, suspects foul play and has Andrei arrested in a showdown of competing males, with the villain torturing the good character and telling him the real profession of his lover.

It can all look preposterous when they decide to manufacture a hot air balloon, to fly over the Danube – successfully this time – they get all the neighbors to participate and then kidnap the vicious brother in-law.

On the one hand, heroic attempts have been made to cross the border – I meet regularly at the pool a man who had climbed on the cars of a train that was destined for Hungary and the West, only to be caught at the border.

However, to make this from material destined for the propaganda demonstrations, with the portrait of the tyrant prominent on the balloon appears more like a metaphor, without a chance to have happened in real life.

This is an interesting, but not very good film.