Buzz is a little different at Cannes. Instead of stars and genres, people have code phrases for hot films. This one was “the Romanian abortion movie”: Christian Mungiu’s tart fable of his country in the last dark days of the Ceauşescu regime. A college girl needs an (illegal) abortion, and her friend hooks her up with a sinister gent named Mr. Bebe. A minimalist thriller, it delivers both as an exercise in suspense and the herald for another vibrant national cinema. That’s Cannes: the place where a nobody director can, within two days, be on everyone’s lips.
