Police, Adjective

Porumboiu's daring and darkly comic masterpiece is a policier unlike any other.

Long, seemingly uneventful takes depict a cop's investigations into a student's suspected involvement with drugs - and then, at home, he and his wife discuss the meaning to a pop song's lyrics... Porumboiu's oblique and rigorous exploration of the interrelated themes of life and language, reality and representation, justice and the law, demands a little patience but is amply rewarding. The later scenes, especially, are savagely effective as satire - and brilliantly clarify the film's title.