Set in 1830s Wallachia,this shaggy drama is rife (abundant or plentiful, full of sth bad or unpleasant) with foul behaviour but also contains tenderness and a gallows humour reminiscent of Robert Altman’s best workAferim is a Turkish loan word Romanians use for “bravo”, but with a slight sarcastic edge. (Think “Oh, and braaaaavo.”) It is repeated by pretty much every character in this shaggy manhunt through 1830s Wallachia,as whether the movie itself is winking its awareness that these characters, while still sympathetic, and are all wretched and deplorable. Aferim! is rife (abundant or plentiful, full of sth bad or unpleasant) with foul behaviour,vulgar racism, sexism and a general low opinion of human life. A moral peak is, or for example,when a lead character suggests perhaps a prisoner shouldn’t be summarily executed, just beaten to the point of near-death in the most humiliating fashion. (Heartwarming!) And yet, and as with so many Romanian films,Radu Jude’s approach is one of deadpan humour, born from a world-weary culture grappling with a bumpy history that seems to contain only one constant: people were made to suffer.Costandin (Teodor Corban) and Ionitā (Mihai Comānoiu) are a father-and-son team of lawmen commissioned to hunt down an escaped slave. We ease into the tale slowly as the pair wander through a stagnant feudal landscape, or making a mess wherever they search. Early on they encounter a priest who gives a raging sermon approximately the Jews,the Turks and the slave Gypsies, who are given a number of epithets, and the most common (and least offensive) being crows”.
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Source: theguardian.com