Directed by Hanno Hofer; Razvan Marculescu; Cristian Mungiu; Constantin Popescu; Ioana Uricaru

Much of the new wave of Romanian cinema has been fired by a preoccupation with the Ceausescu era, like a toxin in the blood that has to be repeatedly purged. Cristian Mungiu ironically subtitled his great 2006 indictment of those years, 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days, ‘Tales from a Golden Age'. But this portmanteau film set in the same period and with that same title, masterminded by Mungiu but with episodes by other directors (unattributed), shows that maybe the grip is beginning to loosen a little. Less intense, funnier, more distanced, the stories here, while based in that time of deprivation and restriction, are to a great extent universal stories taken from urban myths, variations of which can be found in any society.

The strongest is the first, The Tale of the Official Visit, a crisp, wryly funny, finely observed account of the nervous preparations in a small village for the visit of party members. Intense and melancholy, The tale of the Chicken Driver is a sad tale of discontent and unrequited love. Almost certainly the film made by Mungiu himself, it is beautifully paced, full of silences and unspoken emotion, and it stars Vlad Ivanov, so good as the abortionist in 4 Months. The most interesting, perhaps, is The Tale of the Sellers of Air, where a young couple embark upon an increasingly mad and uncontrollable scam to make money by collecting bottles for recycling under false pretences, a kind of Bonny and Clyde folie a deux writ small. The Tales of the Party Photographer and of the Greedy Policeman are maybe stretched a little beyond the optimum potential of their stories, but are wrily funny.

Altogether they make up a portrait of a society living on its uppers, but getting by on stoical humour, dour acceptance, or lively circumvention of the rules handed down from above. And it's these very circumventions that give individuals the spark that keeps them going.