Where do you start to describe a film about a nurse in a fantasy-parallel 1970s capitalist Budapest who becomes cursed as a fox-fairy by the ghost of a deceased Japanese pop singer in a green satin suit who also murders any man who might be interested in her in a fit of jealousy? Well that is the beginning of the plot of this surreal fairy tale and probably just about conveys the tone of this very funny and very inventive film.
The director absolutely revels in his exaggerated 1970s setting, mining it for visual wit and coupling it with super-ironic and very funny soundtrack cues - in the Q&A following the film, he noted that quite a lot of the humour gets lost in translation, but when you have this precise a sense of physical comic timing and the look of your film is so cleverly amusing, then language barriers do not matter.
This is a properly funny film, performed in a delightfully dead pan way, knowing but not insincere. Somehow the running gags don't become tired and the comic violence is used sparingly to provoke semi-shocked laughter rather than horror. I could list a million examples, but on the off-chance it gets a UK release, do not want to spoil any surprises.
It feels completely original, the story line takes tropes of many other films but finds a fun way to mash and remake them. The visuals are so detailed and so well thought out but never feel fussy, but just give the feeling of pure enjoyment in filmmaking. All in all, this film is truly delightful and very memorable.
No comments:
Post a Comment