SEASIDE, DUSK

6/10

Balrap a nap nyugsik
Hungary 2000
dir Andras Fesos
scr Fesos, Gabor Nemeth
cin Andras Nagy
stars Gyozo Szabo, Andrea Takats, Laszlo Kecseg
91 minutes

Though it takes ages to get going – the first half-hour is so confusing you may wonder if the projectionist has mixed up the reels – Seaside, Dusk ends up a surprisingly enjoyable, engaging diversion, though decidedly light on plot. Bulky petty criminal Alex Winter (Gyozo) and his best pal (Kecseg) sets up a drugs deal which (somehow) goes wrong. Winter ends up in a roadside café watching a row between a married couple - the wife roars off with the child in the family’s camper van, leaving the husband behind. He flags down Winter and the pair set off in pursuit. But then there’s some kind of (unseen) accident which leaves Winter blind. Later, back in Budapest, Winter impulsively answers a ringing pay-phone – it’s a wrong number, but Winter strikes up a conversation with the caller, Greta (Takats), a Pole living on the German coast. They exchange numbers and their unlikely long-distance friendship slowly develops into an even more unlikely romance…

An oddball love story featuring a blind man sounds like a recipe for melodrama, but director Fesos gets away with it by playing things very straight, very low-key, aiming for a Jim Jarmusch kind of understated cool. The plot’s meanderings and unexpected left-turns are as breezily idiosyncratic as some of the English subtitling, and Fesos supplies subtle touches (both Winter and Greta having the same photograph stuck to their bedroom wall) that turn fairly mundane events into the intriguing elements of a puzzle or a fable, nimbly exploring memory, imagination, fate and geography. Like its hero, the movie is only intermittently accessible, but this only adds to the refreshing, persuasive air of mystery. Fesos’ wisest move is to relegate the talentless Kecseg into the background and focus on the strengths of his leading man - with his bearish size, fleshy features and strawberry-blond mop-top, Gyozo’s like a Hungarian Philip Seymour Hoffman, deftly switching from taciturn menace to calm vulnerability.