Stuff and Dough

A young man dreaming of enough “dough” to start his own snack stand winds up delivering a package of unknown “stuff” for some dubiously employed gangsters in this deadpan road movie, the debut film by Cristi Puiu, who would go on to direct The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. More Down by Law than Mad Max in its road-movie dynamics (Puiu cited the humor and “emptiness” of Jim Jarmusch’s film as inspiration), Stuff and Dough amiably steers through a shoddily paved Romania of petty criminals and idle dreamers stuck between communism and capitalism, with no correct directions, but plenty of wrong turns.