Poppy Field

Cristi's foreign boyfriend has just dropped in, but Cristi has to go to work as a member of the Romanian "military" police. His team is called on to help with a situation where protestors have stopped the screening of a lesbian film. He hits one person who threatened to out him, and half the film is Cristi interacting with various other individual officers keeping him away from the main crowd and the complainant.

This is a portrait of the police force, its masculine-homophobic culture, and how Cristi adapts to it. However, I would like more action of some sort, rather than all the chatter. I was mildly irritated that the opening boyfriend segment of the film was basically used to establish that Cristi was gay, while the boyfriend's being a Muslim just seems to be an irrelevancy.

Loved the feel of this movie, the acting and the observational directing style. I felt for the lead character's complex life and it has a hopeful message ultimately. This film will travel to many festivals and be a hit I imagine and it is an important film too.

A difficult topic, the story of a gendarme leading a double life, whose secret is on the verge of being revealed. The background of a real-life incident in which a controversial movie projection was interrupted by a group opposing the subjectmatter of the movie is a pretext, and yet it gets too much time in this movie. This is what leads to an imbalance. There is too much noise, and "noise", and that makes it rather unfair for the psychological drama of the hero to unfold. Apart from that, the characters are very convincing, especially the gendarmes and, of course, the main character. What is nevertheless puzzling is the title. Why is it called "Poppy Field" in the first place?

It is scary to see the Romanian reality that some of us know so well displayed on screen in such strong tones. For me, being a victim of a similar assault as portrayed in the movie, it was familiar and disturbing, at the same time. I commend the creators of this movie for their courage. The Romanian society still is exactly as we see it on screen.

Somewhat interesting story of a gay police officer caught in a conflict during a police interaction with homophobic radicals in a gay movie theater. The conflict is that there is someone in the theater who knows this police officer & that he is gay & there is a minor altercation between the two. The rest of this very short film contains extremely vague, seemingly purposeful, one on one dialogue between various police officers ending with the most unusual, puzzling and, of course, vague line in the film. In all honesty, I am not at all sure what this is trying to say, but it is somewhat interesting contemplating it's possible various meanings. The acting is solid, but the title is also unclear.