Implausibility be damned!* Or it better be if you’re going to watch this winning Hungarian film about a boy gymnast who runs away to join the circus. Really, that’s the story; Cirque du Soleil in on the production, and it’s damn involving all the way. Told largely in hop, skip & jump continuity between early 2000s and early 1980s (as if we were on a trampoline which indeed we often are!), we first meet 30-ish Dongó Miklós (Zoltán Miklós Hajdu) in Canada for his new high school athletic coaching job; and then the 12-ish Dongó Miklós of twenty years ago (Orion Radies), the best gymnastic talent in a group being trained by strict/sadistic Coach Puma, a man who disciplines with a razor sharp fencing foil. His team showing multiple swounds from his punishments. And no relief at home as parents second his methods because they like the results. Back in the Canadian present, Dongó slips up on the job, thwacking a teen player when the boy screws up and is immediately called on it by students and parents. Twenty years on and his old coach hasn’t fully left him. Back to his own youth where he finally escapes when an opportunity to be an emergency fill-in at a circus trapeze act comes up. Here’s where plausibility hits the breaking point: making a trapeze debut without rehearsal, in the toughest trick at the Big Top and losing the safety net mid-act. Yikes! All this intercut with a present day gymnastic contest where Dongó is competing against the 19-yr-old he’s been assigned to work with after his slap got him all but fired. It doesn’t all work, but still impossible not to get involved in the dramas & super-fit cast, the circus vs ‘pure’ gymnastics ethos, and the sheer athleticism of a grown Dongó, still in incredible shape.
DOUBLE BILL/LINK: Did someone mention Trapeze Act? TRAPEZE/’56. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/12/trapeze-1956.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Though nothing implausible about the 1980s disciplinarian gym coach in Hungarian Communist Block days.
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