Tales from the Golden Age

Portmanteau films are notoriously uneven. There always seems to be at least one weak link, and the more segments, the more chance of duff parts. Luckily Tales from the Golden Age maintains an impressively high standard, with perhaps only the Legend of the Chicken Driver meandering to little purpose. Taken together the pieces give a typically absurdist view of life under Ceausecu, sometimes comic and bordering on the tragic. Possibly the best sections are the first, where the preparations for an on/off motorcade through a small village culminate with eveyone spinning on a carousel, including the person supposed to operate it, and the Legend of the Greedy Policeman, where a relative's promise of pork comes in the form of a live pig delivered to a block of flats, and the subsequent attempt to kill the animal without anyone noticing. As you can imagine, it doesn't go quite according to plan...