SEEfest 2021 Review: Antonio Pisu’s EST keeps you guessing with its matter-of-fact approach to dramatic misdirection
In Antonio Pisu’s EST (which just screened at the South East European Film Festival (SEEfest)), the year is 1989, the Cold War is winding down, but not yet down for the count. And three young Italian men – Rice, Bibi, and Pago – decide to take a trip to eastern Europe for “yard sales,” i.e. selling hard-to-find western goods out of the trunk of their car. And secondarily, perhaps meet some hot women, even though at least two of the three are in relationships already. What they haven’t accounted for, or paid much attention to is the fact that while Mikhail Gorbachev is lightening up, Romania’s Ceaucescu is still very much a tyrant. And Bucharest, where the boys are headed, is not by any means a safe city.
Along the way, a strange, wild-eyed man asks for help. He desperately needs to get a suitcase to his family in the capital, and cannot go back himself. Will the boys be so kind as to deliver it for him? Anyone who has ever seen a movie would scream “No!” But this one is, after all, based on a true story, for whatever that’s worth. If confronted with such a situation in reality, and you genuinely felt the guy seemed trustworthy…would you?
If this were a typical American movie, one of two paths would likely be followed next. Let’s call them Hostel and Eurotrip. Under the first scenario, the danger gradually escalates until it becomes impossible to escape. Under the second, absurd situations escalate until things get ridiculous, and the guys probably get laid.
But this isn’t that. First, the relatively clueless Bibi does accept, then his friends toss the suitcase out the window. Then they feel guilty after seeing how poor everyone they drive past seems to be, and go back for it. They arrive just in time to watch it grabbed by somebody else. It’s a Hitchcockian set-up, but in a neo-realist world. Nobody here is interested in a vast conspiracy or heist, and none of Ceaucescu’s secret police are dumb enough to believe this trio represents a real threat, nor bothered enough to make examples of them regardless. In what feels like a loaded Chekhov’s gun of sorts, the guys run into a fellow Italian-speaker who knows more than he should, appears to be there by more than coincidence, and who tells them to call him if they get in trouble.
And yet…any trouble that does ensue is relatively minor. Everyone is just kind of too beaten down and sad to make a big deal out of any of this. Our misguided protagonists get a little wiser, but ultimately don’t get to change anything much, or be heroes. On the other hand, living under a dictatorship seems like the sort of thing every average Romanian they meet has reconciled as a minor inconvenience. Although this is a country on the eve of revolution, you wouldn’t know it from the way anybody in this story behaves.
Neorealism originated in Italian cinema, of course, and while writer-director Pisu isn’t looking to make a movie quite that harsh, his matter-of-fact take on what feels like it should be a high concept is welcome. The end credits show the real people and the VHS footage they shot – ironically, the actual guys come across more like Adam Sandler protégés than the actors portraying them. Because the goal isn’t high comedy, but subversion. What if, placed in a situation like the one depicted, people just learned something instead of escalating the stakes?
I dread the likely American remake. And applaud that this was able to so thoroughly misdirect me that I truly never knew what was coming next. Dramatically speaking.
