Örökbefogadás

Based on the first 30 min, which was all I could take, this film, consisting mostly of chain smoking Hungarians earnestly and humorlessly conversing about motherhood and adoption, seems designed to repel viewers. C minus.

As austere as any Bresson, this film shows Meszaros' brilliance as a filmmaker. The story is simple, the acting understated and powerful, the black and white photography masterful, the atmosphere strained and grey. Without once mentioning politics, it could not be a more powerful indictment of Communist society.

It is, a sad comment on the state of film distribution in this day and age that the works of Meszaros, the most prolific woman filmmaker of all time, should be so little available. Come on, Amazon, get with it!

Katalin Berek has a checkup She's 42 and wants to see if she can have a child. She wants one, but her lover doesn't. He is a married man, and they understand he's not going to leave his family. Miss Berek is trying to write a letter apologizing for upsetting him when Gyöngyvér Vigh walks into her life. Miss Vigh has her own letter, this one to her mother saying she's been neglected, and she is going off to lead her own life. Then, while she's putting her own life in order, she stays with Miss Berek.

Márta Mészáros's movie about what defines family is neither subtle nor deep, but watching Miss Berek figure it out on her own is rather interesting, and reasonably paced; I never grew impatient with her not getting it sooner. Even the 1970s depression that hangs over this movie and never quite lifts seems appropriate.

One of the great films about women made by a woman, Marta Meszaros' "Adoption" is about the most fundamental need of many women, to be a mother. Kata is a 43 year old widow, living alone but having an affair with a married man who is not prepared to leave his wife. One day she asks him to father a child with her, which she will raise alone, but he refuses. Then she meets Anna, a young girl from the local boarding school, who asks Kata if she can use her house to meet her boyfriend. A friendship develops between them that might lead to all their problems being solved.

Meszaros shoots her film mostly in close-ups as if by focusing on these faces we are also getting inside their heads. It's an unusual treatment of an unusual subject, one that in an American film would have been sentimentalised out of all proportion. As Kata, Katalin Berek is extraordinarily good and the director, one-time wife of Miklos Jansco, never deviates from the intensity of her subject, making this a deeply moving film. Not much seen these days, this remains a key film of the seventies.

1st watched 7/10/2009 – 4 out of 10 (Dir-Marta Meszaros): Interesting but unsatisfying drama about a middle-aged woman wanting a child but unable to get one in her current situation. She is no longer married and her lover is married to another woman and doesn't want to have one with her. She's medically able and she longs for this. She befriends an orphan from an institution and looks into taking her in as a daughter but this never works out. The movie is about the woman's longing and the routes she has to go to fulfill this. The young girl really just encourages her feelings but the logistics don't make her addition possible. The story is very slow moving and the characters really aren't that appealing. I usually like European movies and their focus on the real drama but this reality isn't that exciting or interesting. It is also very hard to read the main character and she is played very stoicly through most of the movie. Good things happen in the movie, but it's hard to tell the way the movie is directed. Feelings seem to get lost in the ho-hum mix and that's where the movie fails, in my opinion.