Series of European films is marked by grit and gloom

This year 58 countries will be vying for best foreign language film Oscar, a record. Entries range from audience-friendly efforts such as Sweden's ''Zozo," a war-trauma story with an amber-toned palette, to difficult films like Romania's ''The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," an unflinching portrayal of an elderly man seeking treatment for a life-threatening injury. The latter film seems less likely to attract voters, and that's a pity, because it's the much more deserving work.

Whatever the Academy thinks, you can judge for yourself, as both works are featured in the Harvard Film Archive's sixth annual New Films From Europe series, which begins tomorrow and runs through Jan. 31.

Shot as a real-time, down-and-out ''ER" episode, ''Mr. Lazarescu" doesn't stoop to using schmaltzy music or impassioned speeches. Instead, director Cristi Puiu deftly exposes the turf battles among hospitals, the irony-laden compassion of neighbors, and the complex frailty of its protagonist. Lazarescu's ordeal of being shuttled from one Bucharest emergency room to the next invites comparison to work by documentarist Fred Wiseman, yet this is fiction.

A devastating movie experience, ''Mr. Lazarescu" stops before a narratively pleasing resolution. In this film, as in several on this program, an improvisational look and feel harkens back to the gritty, neorealist work found in postwar Europe. And whether filmed with shaky amateurism or elaborate choreography, the movies also prove that the long take is back with a vengeance, at least among art filmmakers in Europe.

The series' two black-and-white movies -- the French ''Regular Lovers" and the Latvian-German ''Fallen" -- use available light to paint a high-contrast, murky urban landscape to especially skillful effect. In ''Fallen," directed by Fred Kelemen, each character nearly falls into that gloom: Alina, an anonymous young woman who inexplicably jumps off a bridge at the film's start, an alcoholic police detective who investigates her suicide, and Matiss, an archivist who witnesses Alina's suicide and becomes obsessed with tracking down the pieces of her life.

''There's an open wound in this society," muses the detective. ''It's bleeding." But no one can stanch the flow -- certainly not Matiss, who stumbles about an unnamed Latvian city, his motivations unclear. The audience is asked to fill in the blanks of this quietly haunting film and share Mattis's curiosity about Alina's life, even when his fascination turns perverse.

For Max, the shamed physicist in Italian Daniele Vicari's ''The Horizon of Events," an unexpected turn adds to his moral conundrum. Max is a researcher leading an experiment that isolates subatomic particles in a lab deep inside a mountain. Through measured, detached scenes, Vicari subtly captures Max's ethical indifference -- until a scandal and a near-fatal car crash cleaves the picture in two, visually and thematically, and Max finds himself stranded in an alien landscape.

Gone are the fluorescent-lighted tunnels and workstations; in their place, the vast sheep-grazing lands on top of the very mountain where his former facility is located. Confronting the harsh world of the shepherds gives Max a chance for redemption. ''The Horizon of Events" asks, but never quite answers, the query posed by Max's mentor: ''I wondered if this constant quest to analyze and explain renders me a more fragile human." Fragile, one wonders, or incapable of compassion?

''Through the Forest" takes the long take to its most technically polished extreme. Consisting of nine episodes, each a 10- to 15-minute single shot, French director Jean-Paul Civeyrac's film weaves elaborate tracking and dolly moves around actors largely in close-up. This fantastical portrait of a grieving young woman, Armelle, and her fragile mental state ultimately doesn't add up, but it's lovely to behold.

The other French film is Philippe Garrel's ''Regular Lovers," an escargot-paced paean to May 1968, when student strikes nearly brought down the government. Equally plotless but much less rewarding is ''Kinetta," a Greek film with an interesting premise: Its characters re-create scenes from serial killings. Alas, it devolves into enigmatic tedium.

The festival's two most commercial films come from surprising places: Turkey and Sweden (via Lebanon). ''Under Construction," by the Turk Ömer Vargi, is a good example of how technical skills can surpass a story. Sweeping crane shots and wide-angle lenses don't much enhance this slapstick satire of two construction workers, Ali and Sudi, who find themselves disposing of bodies for hit men and posing as religious gurus. The film blackly critiques Turkey's hypocritical class system and shallow media -- perhaps a first for Turkish viewers, but old hat for most Americans and Europeans.

The other movie on the slick end of the scale is ''Zozo," which takes place partly in 1978 Beirut, during the civil war, and partly in rural Sweden. The titular boy-hero flees Lebanon for a new life with his grandparents. Its cloying moments of magical realism do speak the Academy's language; being directed by Josef Fares, himself a first-generation Lebanese immigrant to Sweden, won't hurt its Oscar chances, either.

But the lion's share of these New Films From Europe convey that sentiment and simple solutions are rarely found. Still, their languid and deliberate tempos almost convince the viewer that some happier fate might materialize, if only the camera or the characters were to linger in an alleyway, stare at a computer screen or wait . . . and wait . . . in an emergency room a little longer.

New Films From Europe
All showings take place at the Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Harvard Square, Cambridge. Tickets are $8 for the general public and $6 for students and senior citizens. For more information, call 617-495-4700 or go to www.harvardfilmarchive.org.

Thursday: 7 p.m., ''Regular Lovers"

Friday: 7 p.m., ''Ghosts"; 9 p.m., ''Through the Forest"

Saturday: 7 p.m., ''Through the Forest"; 8:30 p.m., ''Ghosts"

Sunday: 7 p.m., ''The Death of Mr. Lazarescu"

Jan. 24: 7 p.m., ''Under Construction";9 p.m., ''The Horizon of Events"

Jan. 27: 7 p.m., ''Fallen"; 9 p.m., ''Under Construction"

Jan. 28: 7 p.m., ''Zozo"; 9 p.m., ''Fallen"

Jan. 30: 9 p.m., ''Kinetta"

Jan. 31: 7 p.m., ''Kinetta"; 9 p.m., ''Zozo"