Bibliothèque Pascal

If you think this is going to be one of those sprightly bright Balkan ethnic panoramas in the superficially entertaining Kusturica mold, you're in for a surprise: Beneath all the visual pizazz and eccentric characterizations lies a deeply disturbing portrait of a society marked by physical and mental exploitation as well as moments of human kindness.

Director Hajdu spins an intriguing web of shifting and merging narrative levels of reality versus imagination, both grim and light. By doing so, he gets a better grip on the imponderability of life than most "real" social dramas put together.

Some may find the way he's handling the brothel scenes way too florid, but bear in mind the narrative's fantastic underpinnings and all fits into place.

8 out of 10 literate pimps

Saw this at the Melbourne International Film Festival the other night and walked out at about the 70 minute mark.

I'm not sure if Hungarians or Romanians might understand this film better, I certainly couldn't.

The lead actress is attractive and tries hard but isn't given enough to work with and the narrative keeps shifting. There was plenty of potential conflict in the opening scene but outside of that I soon lost interest in her character and the other characters she met along with way. The Director seemed to be going for stylish visuals and fantasy sequences whilst forgetting the most important things - the story and characters.

I found Lilya4Ever to be a far superior film about a similar subject. I find it difficult to believe films like this one can even get funding.

I consider this a master piece! It is a rated adult fairy tale. It is a dream projected to the viewers.

It has distinctive story telling. The sound compilation and cinematography are both great. The film creates such an impact you either love it or hate it.

Sex and violence always catches viewers attention.But it has never been done this way!

The film is absurd and surreal. Director Szabolcs Hajdu is not afraid of taking the risk.And be who he really is! I haven't seen something raw powerful and original like this movie for a while.

I do not have a shadow of a doubt to rate this movie with a 10 out of 10 , and I know I am not the only one who like it a lot. Probably is the best movie of the year 2010. Maybe if you already read the plot you got an idea about the movie but as the expression states:SEEING IS BELIEVING you we'll realize that this is exactly the case; You have to see it ! It is so rare nowadays to see real directors with good ideas , imagination and directors who tells us stories , now when everything is cheap and kitsch most of the Hollywood movies are remakes or you got the impression they got nothing to offer .As I mentioned in the title this movie is marked by a magical realism but is not like Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Isabel Allende or another Latin American writer the magical realism is European or should I locate it to the central and eastern Europe. They are no stereotypes about eastern europeans or politics in this movie , and there is a story , you just have to be patient , actually the movie is about story telling from the moment Mona starts to tell the story of herself and her daughter and later on at the fair and at the end in the furniture store.

Hungarian-German-British-Romanian co-production movie "Bibliothèque Pascal" (spoken mainly in Romanian, occasionally in English, while Hungarian is used extensively only in a single theatrical monologue) deals with the heavy subject of human trafficking and sex trade, presented through an imaginative world of the main character, (in)voluntary victim of a modern day slavery, who, in her attempt to reclaim custody of her little daughter, (un)knowingly resorts to fairy-talish description of how she met and lost a man who fathered her daughter and what extraordinary powers little Viorica inherited from him, of good causes she followed to accept her foreign "sexploitive" engagement, and of the imaginative way her "services" were delivered. The only mild objection that can be given to the movie is that everything in it, revolving around Mona Paparu, quietly radiating leading character of subdued expression (brought to the screen by brilliant, classically beautiful Hungarian actress Orsolya Török-Illyés), her life, at first as a traveling artist in the puppet theatre, and later as "Jeanne D'Arc" in stylish chambers of the title "library", inhabited with prostitutes for high-end clientèle, impersonating famous characters from literature (ranging from Desdemona and Ophelia to Dorian Gray and Pinocchio) is too nice and polished for the ugly and rough reality the movie deals with-(the very same sole objection that can be given to Guillermo del Toro's extraordinarily beautiful, phantasmagorical "El laberinto del fauno" ("Pan's Labyrinth"), 2006, in which a young girl escapes from brutalities of life and her ruthless stepfather, army captain in WW2 fascist-ruled Spain, into the fascinating world of her own imagination)-confronting guilt and innocence, violence and kindness, coldness and compassion.