A Hungarian village a few months after WWII; the sort of place where interpersonal eruptions ricochet in a town where you could divide six degrees of separation by three. Today is wedding day for the mayor’s son, nearly everyone’s invited, even the bride’s former lover, a hunky farm manager she seems to prefer to the milquetoast groom. Then there’s the mayor’s wife, addicted to some narcotic, but self-dosing so she can get thru the ceremony. That’s assuming the tailor gets the alterations done on time and the brandy holds out thru the reception. Add on another half-dozen little scenarios, well observed and neatly captured by director Ferenc Török in handsome, rather formal b&w compositions. An insular social-system not so far removed from Marcel Pagnol. (Actually, removed exactly as far as Hungary is from Marseilles.) But now under threat by alarming news: two strangers in town, observant Jews by the look of them, perhaps father & adult son. Relatives of the Jewish family taken away during the war? The family whose house, whose land & whose worldly goods have been generously ‘distributed’ to various parties in town? Goods they’ll now have to give up, possibly give back. And what of the ‘official’ documents they signed to legally transfer the properties. Who forged papers? Who lied? Who’s in trouble? Who needs a drink? Did those Jews have to come back? And on wedding day! It's a fine construct, though something a bit more reckless, a bit more dangerously comic (Gogol-esque?) might have better served these self-serving hypocrites. And there’s a large hole right in the center since we instantly see why the two men are in town, while the locals, perhaps from panic & guilt, unaccountably miss it. The problem not that we catch on, but that the villagers don’t. But points for a fine feel on period detail & character, and for a willingness to show unchanged distrust & discomfort eight decades on.
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