The village of Catane, where every single resident has falsely filed for disability in order to avoid paying ruinous state taxes, has a team from the Commission for Persons with Disabilities dispatched to investigate them.
So Catane is a village out in the middle of nowhere, full of uniquely colorful folk who just want to live their lives in peace amid the beautiful rolling hills and mountains of the Romanian countryside. But taxes apply to everyone, and even villages out in the sticks, what with an official Mayor and citizens and all that, have to either pay taxes or prove that they’re all disabled enough not to have to.
The Commissioner and his 2 assistants, the logistics junior Silviu (Christian Bota) and the inevitable femme secretary who doubles as a medic Magda (Julia Lamanare), try to take their jobs seriously, despite anything and everything apparently being against them. The weather is atrocious, the hills are hard on the ancient car, the “gas station” is a laughable self serve that actually serves as an early warning system to the Catane townsfolk, and all sorts of clever little environmental tricks have been used to discourage the teams actual arrival in Catane. But arrived they have, and are charmed by the bumbling, apparently pitiful, colorful and somehow still vibrant, people of Catane.
Many of the Catane people are artisans of one kind or another, carved furniture and rugs and textiles and sewn creations, others bake and cook and brew rural specialties, using methods that have lasted for hundreds of years. And these wonderful things are used as gifts, no not bribes never bribes they’re gifts, to further convince our investigators doing their interviews that everything really is pathetically and truthfully disabled here in Catane.
Except its not, and as the investigators trundle down the winding mountain road in their overloaded car and the townsfolk of Catane begin celebrating early, things literally begin to fall apart. Mayor Pamfil (Mihai Malaimare) tries to throw himself in their collective mercy to save the town, but lead Inspector Mitrea (Costel Cascaval) is so angry at being deceived he insists on further interrogating each and every last townsperson they interviewed before, during a violent thunderstorm. Femme investigator Magda tries to plead for leniency, but Mitrea’s so very done, no-one can do anything but obey.
And while Mitrea might have been angry enough to report the tricks of Catane citizens to the Disabled Persons Commission for honest review and damn the consequences, when the actual President (Robert Radoveneanu) decides to visit Catane for photo ops for his re-election campaign, Mitrea panics. There’s not enough time for anything and Mitrea finds himself tutoring the folk of Catane in how to make their faked disabilities look and feel as real as possible, at least for the duration of the President and First Ladys’ visit.
The politics and the reality behind it that Mitrea and his crew have been subjected to from the Presidents visit brings Mitreas anger to a crashing halt, bringing them closer to the folk of Catane and a shared understanding that all politics and politicians just suck. And with that understanding, our investigators and the folk of Catane begin anew, to find and work common ground while still, yes, getting away with as much hidden from the interfering government as they possibly can.
Reviewed by Alicia Glass