The Eighth Day of the Week

Surfaces might change, political and economic systems come and go, but there’s a core of human behaviour that remains unchanging and unchanged. And it is therefore more than fitting that Judit Elek tries to speak about the Hungarian present by way of a light-hearted return to an earlier work: her 1969 fiction feature debut, Sziget a szárazföldön. Known as The Lady from Constantinople internationally, its cheeky paradox of an original title translating to “Island on the Mainland” would also fit this film.

Back then, a lonely elderly lady finds her apartment suddenly full of not only memories but also strangers. Now, former operetta diva Hanna Szendrey (is she supposed to be a relative of the family we meet in Maria’s Day?) gets evicted from her house by the latest in terror: the real-estate mafia. She makes Keleti station her temporary home, only to find her once-empty estate stacked with people the housing gangsters have put there – a new community, a new chance? It is worth noting that the house is an almost exact replica of Elek’s own, Hanna is played by Krzysztof Zanussi’s muse Maja Komorowska and was dubbed by Judit Hernádi, who played the mother of Elek’s alter ego Kati in Awakening. Judit Elek’s oeuvre is a most intricate weave indeed.

– Olaf Möller

• 

• 

•