After Party

Tales from behind the Iron Curtain ...

THE TEACHER (B+) - The former Czechoslovakia is the setting for this glimpse of Communist Party shenanigans in the waning days of the Soviet era in the mid to late 1980s.

Here, a middle-school teacher, Maria (Zuzana Maurery), exploits her role as local party chairwoman to extract favors from the parents of her students. If the parents don't cooperate, their child's grades will suffer. The extortion is played as droll dark comedy.

Parents agonize with their decisions of how to give in to the blackmail so as to assure good marks for their children. Kucera (Csongor Kassai) is asked sneak some cakes on a flight to Moscow because he works at the airport, albeit in a capacity that has nothing to do with flight crews. His daughter, Danka (Tamara Fischer), soon gets dumped from the gymnastics team. Another girl (Monika Certezni) connives to get back at the teacher.

The film climaxes with a showdown between school staff and parents, playing out as a gloomy twist on "12 Angry Men." The ending echoes another '80s Iron Curtain drama, "The Lives of Others," right down to post-Soviet Havel-era coda, though "The Teacher" is content to leave the deep stuff to that masterpiece.

THE TREASURE (B+) - Over in Romania, we're back in the present day with two men digging through the past -- literally -- as they hunt for a rumored treasure buried in the postwar era on a family farm.

Corneliu Porumboiu, who has been hit-and-miss -- 2006's "12:08 East of Bucharest" was a thoughtful post-mortem on the Romanian revolution while 2009's "Police, Adjective" felt like a silly wank -- has a sure hand with this reckoning of the Soviet era. Toma Cuzin is a strong lead as Costi, a working-class everyman who can't resist the lure of a neighbor's tall tale about a family treasure hidden before the communists took over.

Cuzin banters engagingly with co-conspirator Adrian (Adrian Purcarescu), and the middle of the film teams them with irascible Cornel (Corneliu Cozmei) and his wonky metal detector. The question, addressed in the final third, is not just will they find anything, but if they do, will they report it to the local police, who will confiscate it if it has value to national history. Thus, the old Communist quid-pro-quo system might come in to play.

But Costi, as much as he hopes to get rich quick also wants to impress his young son, hoping to discover one of those old-fashioned pirate treasures full of jewels and precious metals. That charming side plot sets up a lovely ending awash in childhood exuberance.

BONUS TRACKS
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