Liza, a rókatündér

This movie best compares to the French movie Amelié, though it isn't quite as good, it is still unusual and interesting enough to be worth a watch and a warm recommendation to lovers of Amelié. Where Amelié was very French, this is a Hungaries film though it at least on the surface draws a lot more from Japanese culture than Hungarian. It gives it a nice charm of mixed cultures.

The humor is mixed, some good some that misses the target, but it does the job overall and can put a smile on your face unless you are too cynical. The main character is perhaps a little to clichéd naive, but that is also what drives the plot, so I will excuse it.

I originally had no idea what to expect. I just wanted to watch a movie & saw this had a rating over 7. So it couldn't be too bad could it? WOW! What a pleasant surprise!

Don't be scared off, even if you need subtitles. This was still some of the most fun I've had watching a film in a long time. That's saying a lot for something that is basically just a love story.

As the film's titles drop onto the screen, they are suspended by imaginary ropes and dangling to and fro. It lets me know right off the bat that this is a comedy even though the text is in a language I can't read.

It starts off with a fairly tale feel right away too but... we are soon introduced to a sequence with Japanese pop music. I found this and all the song and dance segments to be hypnotic. The music sounded great but what I really couldn't get enough of were the visuals. These were really beautiful for me to look at. (and I'm not normally a big fan of musical numbers in film).

As the story unfolded, we come to understand the legend of the Fox-Fairy. As an Anime fan I was hooked from that point on. There are some great sight gags all along the way. Some fun with the local Mekk Burger and even a little social commentary on the merits fast food.

They live happily ever after... those who manage to survive that is.

Apparently. Unbeknownst to me. Director Károly Ujj Mészáros, is some kind of love child of Guy Ritchie and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

If you get what I'm putting out there. You're going to love this movie. Some dark comedy and humor; good story telling, and fantastic characters; interwoven with Japanese Kitsune lore, and lots and lots of murder. All set in 1970's Hungary. Did I mention a curse, and Japanese fast food? In there too. Plenty of it... with murder.

It's a shame this kind of movie is a rarity these days. Just goes to show, good writing and storytelling beat out the CG filled crap we're fed these days.

Don't miss it. Really. Did I mention all the murder? :)

This movie starts like a fairy-tale, and retains this style throughout: Liza is a simple young (well, she's hitting 30) girl who hasn't found her dream prince yet. She's working in a fictional Budapest as a live-in nurse for an elderly lady, who teaches her Japanese because she used to be the wife of the Japanese ambassador. Did I mention that it's a very complex fairy tale? Simple Liza reads her favourite Japanese novel over and over, listens to J-Pop and dreams about meeting her prince over a crab burger, just like in the novel. One day, a Japanese pop star from the Sixties appears to her, and they both shake it out. Liza manages to get two hours off to go to a burger joint, which is the closest thing to the crab burger joint of her dreams. While she's gone, her ward dies, killed by the only seemingly innocuous spirit of a Japanese pop singer, Tomy Tano. Liza inherits the flat, but the evil spirit is now jealous of her quest for a dream lover. Many good men, and some mediocre ones, die, and Liza's only explanation for this is that she is a fox-fairy, a Japanese mythological figure of a young, attractive woman who is inevitably killing off all of her suitors ...

This is a very odd, very complex and very well made movie in the style of Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain about a young woman finding happiness. I especially enjoyed the subcosmos of equally erstwhile as well as fictional J-pop star Tomy Tano, he seemed to be living in an eternally hip and fun world of great tunes and swinging moves.

Had to write this after seeing a cruddy review from some local misery guts who waffled on forever and ever about how bad it was. Long reviews are generally an indicator of little to say along with a sense of self importance. Well Liza was a great film in my opinion. The movie, if fantasy fairy tales are your thing, is a well written, beautifully visualised and made European film. There aren't reams of dialogue to put off those who don't like subs, just enough to move the plot and produce gags. The casting is faultless. God bless the Hungarians for financing it's production. To invoke the awful Hollywood cliché that invariably stops me from seeing movies, it is a 'Timeless Classic', Much like 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. I recommenced it, it's funny and entranced me and will do many others for decades.