Dulce Emma

it was a very sensitive and the very first film about the fresh feelings just came up after the political changes (2 years after the first free elections). of course, this film was touching those who lived through that incredible changes. it was often devastating or pathetic for the individual. having seen this film in 1992 it was really moving, sad but elevating.

A very quirky and disjointed narrative, mainly about an underpaid country girl working as a schoolteacher (Emma, stunningly and disturbingly played by Johanna Ter Steege, a Dutch actress, whose dialogue was clearly post-dubbed into Hungarian), with her roommate (Bobe) occasionally getting a look-in. There's gratuitous nudity and sex aplenty, as we see Emma take her morning shower (in a really dingy shower block), awoken to hear/see her roommate loudly having sex with a never-shown man, and Bobe joining a group of other women (all equally underpaid) auditioning as extras for a movie director's Turkish Bath scene. About eight women are shown, at lightning-fast pace, individually posed in the nude, holding up numbers. (Strangely, we do not see either Emma or Bobe undress, nor is this sequence ever even mentioned again ! ) And meeting up with a street artist at a disco, whom she'd met previously, and following him up to his room with no persuasion.

There's also some very disturbing stuff; such as Emma's recurring nightmare, of helplessly rolling down a gravelly hill, naked and screaming; Emma's confusing treatment at the hands of her much-older married lover (the headmaster); and her reaction the way she is interrogated after Bobe's (probably wrongful) arrest for prostituion and possession of foreign currency.

This film is like telling a genuine story about two girlfriends. At the first moment. They are alone and learn to know each other better and better. The hidden story behind the story shows how complex human relationships are. And that at the very end one has to live with defeat. They seem have told everything. But nobody will or wish to do that. That's the tragedy of human existence. Your friends are not your friends, like our children are not ours.

This was a fairly short movie, yet it didn't take that long for me to get bored while watching it. I was mildly interested in learning of some of the changes taking place in post-Cold War Hungary, but the main story was thoroughly uninteresting. I just never cared about these characters and their relationships with one another. In fact, the most interesting part of this film is trying to understand the casting. They used Dutch actress Johanna ter Steege to play the lead role, then they dubbed over her voice with that of a Hungarian actress...