A couple in love, but sadly married to other partners. What is to be done? Judit Elek’s delayed second fiction feature (after an enforced silence due to her iced Martinovics project), and her first one to screen at IFFR (after her cinéma vérité epic On the Field of God in 1972-73, IFFR 1976 and A Commonplace Story, IFFR 1976).
Furious energies are at work here: people hiss and holler truths and insults at each other in a world that seems to consist solely of perennially dirty and derelict houses and apartments. Some of the damage, like a clock that stopped when someone died, has a symbolic dimension for the characters; others look as if the set designer thought that a lack of cleaning best represented the desired effect. Underwear suggests urges as well as a disinterest in hiding them, cold spaghetti that there’s more to life than eating and keeping the human machine going.
One could think of filmmaker John Cassavetes, only his works look tame and well behaved in comparison with this descent into a relationship’s demise – more from the tired inertia of a society that has lost all direction and sense of purpose than any ill will.
– Olaf Möller
Film details
- Country of production
- Hungary
- Year
- 1980
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2023
- Length
- 104"
- Medium/Format
- DCP
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