In a decaying mansion an old woman, her son, her nurse, the latter’s lover, and an unemployed professor are caught up in a nightmarish psychodrama of greed, jealousy, and lost hope.
Differently from Béla Tarr’s stark later masterpieces, this transitional film from 1984 uses strong expressive colours as well as unusual camera positions and movements to convey the emotional state of the characters and their claustrophobic entanglements. The confinement of the action to one location and the high degree of stylisation bring to mind Fassbinder’s Chinese Roulette.
Hungary 1984, colour, 119mins. With English subtitels. Director: Béla Tarr. With Hédi Temessy, Erika Bodnár, Miklós B. Székely.
In collaboration with the Hungarian Cultural Centre London.
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