Down by Love
Bunyik Entertainment
Tamas Sas' psychodrama "Down by Love" (Szerelemtol sujtva) is designed to isolate actress Patricia Kovacs in her Budapest, Hungary, flat for what amounts to a one-woman show. Neighbors and messengers seen in silhouette come to the door and she is on the phone often, but she never interacts with any other actor. It's all Kovacs for 94 minutes. Which means the viewer experiences a perilous tug-of-war between annoyance at the extreme artificiality of the conceit and admiration of the gutsy performance by an actress who must, literally, carry the movie.
Annoyance wins out, unfortunately. Thus "Down by Love", which opened March 5 at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills, is a movie for those who like to witness a filmmaker challenge himself with an extreme methodology.
In a way, Sas' insistence on isolating this single character with his camera sums up her self-absorbed life. Eva, 24, lost her parents in a traffic crash at a young age. Adopted by her parents' close friends, well-known writer Tibor (Gabor Mathe) and his wife, Klara (Rita Tallos), she is seduced by Tibor at age 13. Although swiftly removed to a convent, presumably by Klara, she resumes the affair when she returns to the flat her parents left her. Here she works as a freelance cartoonist and sees Tibor for a few hours twice weekly.
Robbed of all control of her life by the boorish Tibor, Eva is unable or unwilling to respond to the advances of a young man who lives across the street and only occasionally connects, mostly by phone, with her one close friend, a woman she met at the convent.
All this back story we gleam from a busy soundtrack of nightmares and voice-overs from the past, Eva's rereading of letters written long ago, snatches of phone conversations and Eva's mutterings as she pushes her body on an exercise bicycle.
When Eva learns that Tibor is paying the alcoholic son of her aunt who lives next door to spy on her, thus robbing her of what little dignity she has left, she resolves to take an unusual revenge.
Sas, directing from a screenplay he wrote with Can Togay, tries to break the monotony of the four walls through the rhythms of his editing and camera movements. And Kovacs does a commendable job of portraying Eva's swift changes in moods and inner conflicts through facial expressions and body language. But monotony is still monotony, whether relieved or not.
Tamas Sas' psychodrama "Down by Love" (Szerelemtol sujtva) is designed to isolate actress Patricia Kovacs in her Budapest, Hungary, flat for what amounts to a one-woman show. Neighbors and messengers seen in silhouette come to the door and she is on the phone often, but she never interacts with any other actor. It's all Kovacs for 94 minutes. Which means the viewer experiences a perilous tug-of-war between annoyance at the extreme artificiality of the conceit and admiration of the gutsy performance by an actress who must, literally, carry the movie.
Annoyance wins out, unfortunately. Thus "Down by Love", which opened March 5 at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills, is a movie for those who like to witness a filmmaker challenge himself with an extreme methodology.
In a way, Sas' insistence on isolating this single character with his camera sums up her self-absorbed life. Eva, 24, lost her parents in a traffic crash at a young age. Adopted by her parents' close friends, well-known writer Tibor (Gabor Mathe) and his wife, Klara (Rita Tallos), she is seduced by Tibor at age 13. Although swiftly removed to a convent, presumably by Klara, she resumes the affair when she returns to the flat her parents left her. Here she works as a freelance cartoonist and sees Tibor for a few hours twice weekly.
Robbed of all control of her life by the boorish Tibor, Eva is unable or unwilling to respond to the advances of a young man who lives across the street and only occasionally connects, mostly by phone, with her one close friend, a woman she met at the convent.
All this back story we gleam from a busy soundtrack of nightmares and voice-overs from the past, Eva's rereading of letters written long ago, snatches of phone conversations and Eva's mutterings as she pushes her body on an exercise bicycle.
When Eva learns that Tibor is paying the alcoholic son of her aunt who lives next door to spy on her, thus robbing her of what little dignity she has left, she resolves to take an unusual revenge.
Sas, directing from a screenplay he wrote with Can Togay, tries to break the monotony of the four walls through the rhythms of his editing and camera movements. And Kovacs does a commendable job of portraying Eva's swift changes in moods and inner conflicts through facial expressions and body language. But monotony is still monotony, whether relieved or not.
- 7/9/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Down by Love
Bunyik Entertainment
Tamas Sas' psychodrama "Down by Love" (Szerelemtol sujtva) is designed to isolate actress Patricia Kovacs in her Budapest, Hungary, flat for what amounts to a one-woman show. Neighbors and messengers seen in silhouette come to the door and she is on the phone often, but she never interacts with any other actor. It's all Kovacs for 94 minutes. Which means the viewer experiences a perilous tug-of-war between annoyance at the extreme artificiality of the conceit and admiration of the gutsy performance by an actress who must, literally, carry the movie.
Annoyance wins out, unfortunately. Thus "Down by Love", which opened March 5 at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills, is a movie for those who like to witness a filmmaker challenge himself with an extreme methodology.
In a way, Sas' insistence on isolating this single character with his camera sums up her self-absorbed life. Eva, 24, lost her parents in a traffic crash at a young age. Adopted by her parents' close friends, well-known writer Tibor (Gabor Mathe) and his wife, Klara (Rita Tallos), she is seduced by Tibor at age 13. Although swiftly removed to a convent, presumably by Klara, she resumes the affair when she returns to the flat her parents left her. Here she works as a freelance cartoonist and sees Tibor for a few hours twice weekly.
Robbed of all control of her life by the boorish Tibor, Eva is unable or unwilling to respond to the advances of a young man who lives across the street and only occasionally connects, mostly by phone, with her one close friend, a woman she met at the convent.
All this back story we gleam from a busy soundtrack of nightmares and voice-overs from the past, Eva's rereading of letters written long ago, snatches of phone conversations and Eva's mutterings as she pushes her body on an exercise bicycle.
When Eva learns that Tibor is paying the alcoholic son of her aunt who lives next door to spy on her, thus robbing her of what little dignity she has left, she resolves to take an unusual revenge.
Sas, directing from a screenplay he wrote with Can Togay, tries to break the monotony of the four walls through the rhythms of his editing and camera movements. And Kovacs does a commendable job of portraying Eva's swift changes in moods and inner conflicts through facial expressions and body language. But monotony is still monotony, whether relieved or not.
Tamas Sas' psychodrama "Down by Love" (Szerelemtol sujtva) is designed to isolate actress Patricia Kovacs in her Budapest, Hungary, flat for what amounts to a one-woman show. Neighbors and messengers seen in silhouette come to the door and she is on the phone often, but she never interacts with any other actor. It's all Kovacs for 94 minutes. Which means the viewer experiences a perilous tug-of-war between annoyance at the extreme artificiality of the conceit and admiration of the gutsy performance by an actress who must, literally, carry the movie.
Annoyance wins out, unfortunately. Thus "Down by Love", which opened March 5 at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills, is a movie for those who like to witness a filmmaker challenge himself with an extreme methodology.
In a way, Sas' insistence on isolating this single character with his camera sums up her self-absorbed life. Eva, 24, lost her parents in a traffic crash at a young age. Adopted by her parents' close friends, well-known writer Tibor (Gabor Mathe) and his wife, Klara (Rita Tallos), she is seduced by Tibor at age 13. Although swiftly removed to a convent, presumably by Klara, she resumes the affair when she returns to the flat her parents left her. Here she works as a freelance cartoonist and sees Tibor for a few hours twice weekly.
Robbed of all control of her life by the boorish Tibor, Eva is unable or unwilling to respond to the advances of a young man who lives across the street and only occasionally connects, mostly by phone, with her one close friend, a woman she met at the convent.
All this back story we gleam from a busy soundtrack of nightmares and voice-overs from the past, Eva's rereading of letters written long ago, snatches of phone conversations and Eva's mutterings as she pushes her body on an exercise bicycle.
When Eva learns that Tibor is paying the alcoholic son of her aunt who lives next door to spy on her, thus robbing her of what little dignity she has left, she resolves to take an unusual revenge.
Sas, directing from a screenplay he wrote with Can Togay, tries to break the monotony of the four walls through the rhythms of his editing and camera movements. And Kovacs does a commendable job of portraying Eva's swift changes in moods and inner conflicts through facial expressions and body language. But monotony is still monotony, whether relieved or not.
- 3/19/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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