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woman

working at the

national television's

cen

s

orship office, Irina Margareta Nistor.

Nistor

accepted the risky task,

dubb

ing

all characters

and

her

pleasant,

high-pitched,

unmistakable

voice

became

a phenomenon

in a time when

the black market for bootleg tapes exploded and

almost everyone

was watching

the forbidden '

imperialist'

movies,

which were mostly genre and B pictures, actions flicks and romances

. Th

e myth of the woman behind

the voice was born

. When

one character

says

Nistor has

the most

recognizable

voice in Romania after Cea

u

șescu

's

, it's

no

exaggeration.

There are a lot of talking heads in this film and most of them are

moving

to watch as they remember the films and the effect they and Nistor's voice had on their lives.

However, t

he film suffers from

being

repetitive, both visually and narratively, and

Călugăreanu

can

't

avoid beginners' mistakes, from the reliance of style over substance in many takes or the urge to make the documentary more thrilling by adopting the look and mood of the discussed films,

re-

enacting

Nistor

and Zamfir

's activity

in

spy film

aesthetics

. These flaws are easy to forgive though thanks to the interview

ees'

genuine

emotion

and the

hilarious

film

excerpts with Nistor's legendary dubbing. The audience

in the cinema

was

roaring

with laughter anytime

Jean-Claude

V

an Damme's fight acrobatics

or some hair-raising

macho

Chuck Norris scene came

along

. The parts about Nistor's veiled translation of curse words or sex talk is

also

particularly

fun

ny

, not only from a linguistic point of view,

just as her

tendency to use a bit of

a poetic license,

infus

ing

some characters with more feeling

by adding words to the original conversation

.

As much as I enjoyed the film

and its breezy fun

, I

was also

disappointed by its simplistic approach. Chuck Norris vs. Communism is not a research film but mostly an homage to Irina Nistor,

contributing to the

mythologisation

of her and Zamfir's actions

. With such a meaty story, it would have been great to tackle some more uncomfortable questions or show a different angle to all the onscreen

reverence

. Instead, it chooses a safe and comfortable position of merely relating facts most of us know, relying heavily on emotions and nostalgia. While these are valid aspects in this particular story, they should not be a documentarian's

sole

interest. The

final

conclusion that these films played a major role in the Romanian revolution, making people realise what they had been deprived of and leading them to rebel, also made me cringe. If only things were so simple. Still, the film is a must-see for everyone interested in cinema and especially for the ones who lived or grew up with Nistor's voice and for whom Jean-Claude

V

an Damme

will

never 'just'

be

Jean-Claude

V

an Damme. [embed width="560" height="315"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAxZ08YGzL0"> By Ioana Moldovan, columnist