This film could have been much more than it turns out to be in the end, somehow. I was very intrigued to see it, and I did not regret it, because the dark hyperrealistic and hyper-dreamlike atmosphere of melancholic and little bit deserted Budapest definitely doesn't disappoint. The idea is very interesting: a successful career woman, a neuro-surgeon, comes back to Budapest after twenty years, because of a man whom she believe to be a man of her life. However, he pretends they have never met before. So she stays in Budapest and moves her life back there in order to explore the whole thing, keeping seeing the guy who seems to be interested, though . The film is successfully keeping the attention of a viewer who is eager to see whether she made up the whole thing, or the guy seems to be disturbed in his mind. But in the end it turns out it is neither of these possibilities, but just the pure lie of the guy who got scared and chickened out from a woman who seemed to like him, so in the end he admits it.
The film cleverly makes two protagonists both neuro-surgeons, people who mess with human brains, and who know very well that the brain is not something firm and unquestionable, and it was very promissing plot in the movie. But the ending kind of erases this clever constellations and make them two ordinary people: the guy who tried to sell a typical insecure men's lie, and a woman patient enough to wait for him to admit it. It is just too banal, in the context of the whole atmosphere of unstable human mind situation. The whole situation of "pretending not to know somebody" is just too banal to be believable, and the second it was revealed, all the mystery about Janos, "the mysterious man" was totally killed, but in a bad way. This film promised much more than resolution in the style of "rom-com", but in the end, it delivers a disappointing ending. Pity. I believe the author simply wasn't brave enough to elevate the point to a higher level. Not that there are no interesting points and places to discuss in this movie, far from that, but it missed a great chance to be a true revelation.
The film cleverly makes two protagonists both neuro-surgeons, people who mess with human brains, and who know very well that the brain is not something firm and unquestionable, and it was very promissing plot in the movie. But the ending kind of erases this clever constellations and make them two ordinary people: the guy who tried to sell a typical insecure men's lie, and a woman patient enough to wait for him to admit it. It is just too banal, in the context of the whole atmosphere of unstable human mind situation. The whole situation of "pretending not to know somebody" is just too banal to be believable, and the second it was revealed, all the mystery about Janos, "the mysterious man" was totally killed, but in a bad way. This film promised much more than resolution in the style of "rom-com", but in the end, it delivers a disappointing ending. Pity. I believe the author simply wasn't brave enough to elevate the point to a higher level. Not that there are no interesting points and places to discuss in this movie, far from that, but it missed a great chance to be a true revelation.
