A real slog. Recently deceased Hungarian writer/director Károly Makk loads on impenetrable imagery in this memory piece about a pair of estranged sisters (they exchange letters, but have no physical contact) sharing reveries of a close past, signified with near subliminal flashes of younger days glimpsed as faded, slightly distorted images. Reference is made to a romantic rivalry; there's disagreement over their father’s death (political execution or defeatist’s suicide?); and the younger of the two is seen losing her position as a music teacher and dealing with the possible return to her life of a once famous singer, but not much comes of these sidebar incidents. Come to think of it, not much comes of anything in here, the film proudly offering itself as a particularly woeful example of a once common opaque film festival æsthetic not much missed and little mourned. (What a tedious entry for that year’s Foreign Language Oscar® run.) An earlier film from Makk, LOVE/’71, about an old mother who’s kept from learning the truth about her political prisoner son, sounds more promising. But this film hardly whets the appetite.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For an art house style memory film of the period, try Alain Resnais’s ultra-refined PROVIDENCE/’77.
No comments:
Post a Comment