Dorottya Udvaros Movies

The media's fascination with criminals, and their desire to cloak sensationalism in the guise of informing the public, goes under the knife in this bizarre satiric comedy. Frau Plastic Chicken (Dorottya Udvaros) is the host of a popular television show called Nexxt, which serves up a variety of deviant behavior for the amusement of her viewing audience. While the hostess has arranged for a live broadcast of the arrest of Rex Madison (Viktor Bodo), a notorious multiple murderer, Frau Plastic Chicken wants something even splashier for her audience, so she schedules a post-arrest interview spot, in which Madison will discuss his crimes with Alexander Grushkin (Zoltan Mucsi), a man who claims to have been the inspiration for the character of Alex in the novel A Clockwork Orange. Since Grushkin is a good bit more serene these days than he was in his youth, Frau Plastic Chicken decides to first take him on a trip down memory lane, recreating the notorious "Ludovico Treatment" by strapping him to a chair and showing him sickening films of two women being beaten and murdered. Nexxt: Frau Plastic Chicken Show was produced in tandem with a stage adaptation of the same material, which opened around the same time the film began appearing at international film festivals. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Three disappointed wives, each seeking to divorce her husband, gather together for a wild night of drinking and fun in this colorful Hungarian-German comedy. Mother of two Eniko wants out of her marriage after her husband throws her through a glass door after she makes fun of his masculinity. Dorka, who also has a pair of kids, has fallen for a younger man, while Barbara, an actress, finds life with her husband, an erotic artist, stiflingly dull. The three women meet at an indoor pool get drunk and determined to dump their spouses. The film then chronicles the fate of each woman after that. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Soft, sensual cinematography abounds in this erotic look back at a gypsy girl's coming of age. It is based on a popular novel penned by famed Hungarian novelist Peter Esterhazy using the pseudonym Lili Csokonai and represents 'Lili's" autobiography. In the film, Lili has lost her legs in a terrible accident. An extraordinary beauty, she spends a miserable wheelchair-bound life stranded in her apartment and forced to satisfy her husband's sexual whims. It is only through her diary that she finds comfort. Therein, she remembers her one great love, a dashing salesman who introduced the adolescent girl to all of life's sensual pleasures. Like a spoiled housecat, Lili comes to expect, demand that her lover Marton continue to satisfy her unending thirst for comfort, passion and love. When she discovers that he is engage to another she refuses to let go. Afterward she learns about another type of love with her beautiful lesbian neighbor. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The post office building of a new housing development has almost been completed, but it will be a few weeks before it officially opens. In this crime caper comedy, a few schemers and con-artists wonder what would happen if they "opened" it a week early? A lot of money comes and goes by mail; they could make a killing. They decide to try to pull off this scheme, little suspecting that in the course of it, they will have to cope with a would-be bomber, a postal strike, and a blackmail attempt, as well as the police and the authorities. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Meeting Venus is based on a play cowritten by the film's director, Istvan Szabo. Glenn Close plays a celebrated Swedish opera star Karin Anderson who is slated to appear in an internationally-telecast production of Tannhauser. Ms. Anderson balks at the notion of working with obscure Hungarian conductor Zoltan Szanto. The much-anticipated production may never get off the ground, thanks to labor-management difficulties, intramural jealousies, and clashing egos. Admidst all this chaos, the mismatched Anderson and Szanto fall in love. Filmed in Budapest, Meeting Venus was far from a box-office hit thanks in great part to an inadequate advertising campaign; hopefully it will gain the wide audience it deserves on videocassette. (PS: Glenn Close's singing is dubbed by real-life opera luminary Kiri Te Kanawa. We tell you this because the lyp-synching is done so well that you might actually believe that Close is performing those arias herself). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Charming rogue that he is, Tamas Holl (Gabor Reviczy) is sitting on top of the world at the beginning of this comedy. He has gotten his way in nearly everything. He's gotten out of his marriage and is now having a semi-serious affair with one woman, a non-serious affair with another. Plus, he has managed to put some money aside by swindling his clients at the auction house he works at. When three thugs start to follow him around and harrass him in all sorts of ways (including shaving his head) he doesn't know who has put them up to it, and his life falls apart. He has cheated, lied to and betrayed so many of the people in his life, he can't begin to sort out who is the most aggrieved. His best friend? His ex-wife? His brother, whose wife he once got pregnant? Who would do such things to a loveable chap like Tamas? ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The work of renowned Hungarian screenwriter and director Miklos Jancso has grown increasingly enigmatic since his first film in 1958. Jézus Krisztus horoszkópja is no exception to this rule. Jancso emphasizes highly evocative and ambiguous imagery over dialog or exposition. Here he seems primarily interested in showing the painful, stunted lives of Hungary's intellectuals, who are shown as remaining silent and ineffectual during various political crises. There are several action sequences involving chases and shootouts, but since there's no clear narrative we're not sure how they relate to each other or to anything else. The film is, however, visually fascinating, with shots of police cars, horses, and naked bodies juxtaposed and extensive use of multiple video imagery. The camera work is dazzling. This kind of film is obviously not aimed at general audiences. Fans of Jancso and those interested in experimental filmmaking will find it a difficult but rewarding experience. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A man recalls the memory of his late childhood friend in a series of flashbacks in this uneven political drama. Benedict Both (Gyorgy Cserhalmi) is the painter and political activist who along with friend Peter Halasz (Peter Andorai) took to the streets during the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary. Benedict reflects on his childhood and memories of Peter when he learns of his friend's death in Paris. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The second film in the trilogy made by director Istvan Szabo and actor Klaus Maria Brandauer -- hammocked between Mephisto and Hanussen -- Colonel Redl continues Mephisto's fascination with a man overwhelmed by history. In that film, Brandauer played an actor who tried to ignore the rise of the Third Reich, and here he's an ambitious military officer in pre-World War I Austria whose career path is set early on. In military school, he's forced to inform on a student who's the source of a practical joke; though he beats himself up for being a Judas, he soon realizes that to rise in the ranks he must overcome his peasant background and hide his homosexuality by ingratiating himself with his superiors. In time, he becomes Chief of Military Intelligence for the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Though he professes to hate politics and politicians, Redl also can't avoid them. When the leader for whom Redl is supposedly spying among the officer corps, draws up a list of who can't be exposed for traitorous activities (including Austrian nobles, Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs, Croatians, and even the usual scapegoats, Jews -- the aftershocks of the Dreyfuss affair are still rumbling), he tells Redl that he must find a double of himself, a Ukrainian. Now certain that he will be exposed, Redl surrenders to fate, quoting to his wife from Montaigne: "It's no sin to be involved. It's a sin to remain involved." Brandauer is a wonder as the self-loathing Redl, and Szabo's camera picks up every nuance on his expressive face. The film eschews music except for several party scenes, and the absence of a score is most effective in the final shots of Redl's fellow officers awaiting his fate. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

The director of a provincial theater group, Adam Horkai (Sandor Szakacsi) is in the middle of rehearsing his troupe for a Schubert musical when he learns that a famous Hungarian author has only two weeks left to live. Out of veneration for the author's contributions to literature, Horkai decides to fake rehearsals of the dying man's prohibited play, "The Jacobins" and invite the moribund writer to come witness his great work as the actors run through it. The cast knows the play is banned, but they concur in this scheme to make the last two weeks of the writer's life rewarding. Their rehearsals, in fact, are so intense that the crew and director have all but forgotten their play acting was only play acting and the result is that they stemmed the tide of the playwright's illness. Now he is looking forward to an "opening night" -- and the director sees no easy way out of his dilemma. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi