5/10
A few years ago Hungarian director Gyorgy Palfi put out a movie called I Am Not Your Friend. Shot ultrarealistically, it compiled scenes featuring non-actors given a loose scenario and then improvising from it. It was okay. I suppose its spiritual predecessor was this Hungarian film from 2003 by Benedek Fliegauf. Following an opening where a bunch of people are milling around what seems to be a closed space in a shopping mall, we "meet" the same people involved in intense discussions or arguments. The unbroken shots each last for about 10 minutes each and feature unusually extreme closeups - the most we ever get to see are the participants faces. The topics of conversation range from a man pawning a dog off on a young man ("the dog has chosen you") to a father's bizarre way of coming to grips with his daughter's pubescence to a strange story told in a canoe of a fish so large the townspeople have been feasting on it for decades. It doesn't amount to much more than a mild curiosity and with two Hungarian movies so similar in subject and approach with five years of each other, I kind of wonder what the attraction is.
