A friend of mine said watching The Death of Mr Lăzărescu made him feel ill. This is probably the most concise review of this film and it encapsulates best its immense power. The black comedy dealing with a patient transferred from one hospital to the next is one of the best Romanian films of all times.

Among many other prizes, Moartea domnului Lăzărescu snatched the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes film festival in 2005 and this is also what prompted me to discuss it this week. The prestigious French film fest ends on Sunday and with no Romanian entry in the long-features competition this year, I was more than happy to grab the opportunity and talk about such a wonderful former prize-winner.

Do not be fooled by the film's genre classification though, it has indeed a wonderfully dark sense of humour but it is in the first place an absurd tragedy of a man ignored by a system meant to help him.

When cranky, lonely pesioner Dante Lăzărescu (played by the excellent Ion Fiscuteanu) complains to his neighbors about stomach pains, they call and ambulance and this triggers a night of horror, with him being passed on from one hospital to the other in the course of one night until the last one finally admits him.

Mr Lăzărescu encounters no sympathy, not to mention competence, and the ending, as you might imagine and guess from the title, is not the happiest one. His only friend is a paramedic but even her care cannot compensate for the criminally imperfect medical system.

For any chuckle about the absurdity of the situation there is one pang to the heart of every person who has been in a Romanian hospital. In this respect, The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu transcends its fictional frame and offers a lucid, biting, and ultimately human picture of the Romanian health care system. And not just the health system, but of a social system to which normality and empathy are often foreign terms.

The strengths of the film lie more than in its mature subject handling and the excellent acting. Director Cristi Puiu employs an array of 'realist', documentary-style techniques, with a camera which is mainly hand-held and shaky, naturalistic lighting, and long, uncut scenes. There are no pretty shots, no dazzling tricks, no big-emotions-generating soundtrack. And it is exactly this impressively assured mix of content and form that make The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu an endlessly gripping, mesmerizing piece of art.

You can purchase the DVD at any Cărturești shop or at their online store.

By Ioana Moldovan, columnist, ioana.moldovan@romania-insider.com