Masculinity is an inescapable prison in the searing Romanian drama Poppy Field (Câmp de maci). Eugen Jebeleanu’s acclaimed first feature soberly examines the life of a closeted gendarme in an environment of institutionalised homophobia and male codes.
There is an air of passion but also clandestine dread when we first meet Cristi (Conrad Merricoffer) and his long-term partner Hadi (Radouan Leflahi) who is visiting for a few days. It is evident early on that their relationship is one of intensity but also confinement when the men enter an elevator, only embracing when the doors have closed. Jebeleanu has said that his film is a story of a love that is impossible. Later, Hadi suggests an overnight trip to the mountains but we sense an evasiveness in Cristi’s tone. “It’s complicated”, he says, making excuses. When Cristi’s sister makes an impromptu visit the next day, she initially seems accepting of their relationship but her questioning of the couple soon becomes tense and uncomfortable.
After the relative sedateness of the opening scenes, the film’s central sequence hits like a cinematic grenade. Cristi and his colleagues are called to an incident at a cinema where homophobic protestors have stormed a queer film screening and Romania’s troubled history with gay rights and the deep seam of religious conservatism comes into sharp, troubling focus. This remarkable, stunningly staged sequence is aided by cinematographer Marius Panduru’s queasy, unbroken camerawork, heightening its vérité, news-reel urgency. The camera darts from audience member to protester to officer and amid this all is a shell-shocked Cristi, a closeted gay man, observing with a lost detachment. The scene brilliantly encompasses a microcosm of the political and personal in all its prismatic chaos and viewpoints.
The incident was inspired by a real-life events in Bucharest, where queer film screenings were disrupted by ultra-nationalist hate groups and there is an added layer of meta-interrogation in the film. Poppy Field is both picking apart and challenging what kind of cinema should be produced and viewed in the country. Romania decriminalised homosexuality in 2001, which means that under the current law same-sex marriages are allowed, but this was threatened in 2018 by a referendum to amend the constitution.
There is a clammy, nerve-shredding moment when Cristi recognises a man in the crowd who could implicate him, adding an element of the suspense thriller, but his internalised self-loathing leads to a moment of sudden, unexpected violence that leaves him held up in the auditorium, unsure of his future. Merricoffer has very few lines of dialogue in the film but still delivers a complex performance through stillness and Ioana Moraru’s sparse script remains teasingly ambiguous to the end. The film remains ambivalent about the gendarme’s role at the protest; are they there to protect the citizens or the protestors?
Jebeleanu does not feel the need to satisfy simple conclusions, but instead presents us with the harsh reality. In a country where issues of censorship, democracy, and equality still remain in flux, clear answers will not arrive easily. Poppy Field ends on a note of irresolution but its existence as one of the few LGBTQ+ films to be made in Romania and its continued screening at various festivals is an act of powerful resistance in itself.
