Un autre regard

There's not much to be said about this masterpiece of Károly Makk that has not been said already. It captures the feeling of oppression on all levels and yet maintains the integrity of the people concerned. It is a bleak tale - maybe long gone - but the same happens in the Arab world today - just different. I hope they figure it out as Europe did.

The lesbian part of it is so beautiful, yet so unfulfilling for both of them due to the regime they live under. Nowadays they would have met, fallen in love and maybe married. That is a nice thought. I would have wished that for them. But - alas....

The acting were superb for both our lead ladies - and everybody around them really. And what a musical score - I know I am old, but that kind of music never left me cold. For young people of today - have a peak at this movie - you will learn something of the near past.

I first saw "Another Way" in 1982 in a small London art cinema. Set in Hungary in 1958, it conveys something of the tedium of life there and then, and in an age when lesbianism is no longer a dangerous secret, the tension of a relationship needing to be kept under wraps is brilliantly conveyed. Grazyna Szapolowska - is there a more beautiful woman anywhere is the world? - plays the woman who is apparently happily married to a Hungarian army officer, who finds herself strangely attracted to the new arrival at the office. I will say no more of the plot in case you have a chance to see this moody but magnificent film. Gabor Reviczky portrays the kind of young man to whom a bottle is the answer to all life's problems, and Josef Kroner is the editor of the magazine who may appear to be housetrained by the Communist party but is actually a rebel in his own right. Hardly a feelgood movie, but when you need a cry this is not to be ignored.

Please let us get to the point about this film. It is about two women and the struggle they have with the society around them and also within themselves. It is a brilliantly acted film, and that is why I have given it a 5 and no more. Another Way of really loving is not allowed these two women, and both the writer and the director made these choices. A film is not made by itself. The makers creatively could have chosen another way of ending the scenario and not taken the inevitable tragic trope that so often determines homosexual film ( at least it used to until the beginning of this century when a really independent gay cinema emerged and is still happily growing ). This is a film of despair, and quite rightly, given that it is set in one of the most homophobic countries in Europe and it is amazing it was even made at all. Hungary as then is still a homosexual hating place and both women would still meet with difficulties, but even back then in the so-called dark ages of gay oppression in Eastern Europe a hidden love could have found another way than the darkness meted out to them. How brave the film could have been if there had been a little more light in it. Just a little more and I would have rated it the masterpiece the actors deserved, but instead it ends up in the pit of death and loneliness. It is a timid revolution of a film.

In Budapest in 1958, the population is cowed by the oppressive, intrusive, ubiquitous presence of Stalinism. Two young women embark on a love affair in defiance of the social pressures ranged against them.

Eva (Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak) is an intellectual and a journalist. Born a peasant, and with her roots still very much in village life, her version of Magyar nationalism is the very antithesis of Stalinism. Unconventional in all things, Eva is a confirmed lesbian.

Livia is the voluptuous blonde who shares an office with Eva at "The Truth", the Budapest magazine for which they both work. Livia (Grazyna Szopolowska) is utterly unlike Eva. Big and sexy where Eva is small and wiry, she has an easy, unthinking physicality. She plays water-polo better than the men, and dances the night away at the Selznok party. Married to Denci, the army officer, she leads a life of bland sexual and political conformity.

Though she has not realised it up to now, Livia is dissatisfied with her dull urban existence. Life and work in Stalinist Budapest is a drab, joyless grind. Eva, the brash intellectual with heretical ideas and peasant common sense disrupts editorial meetings. She is a breath of fresh air. Livia becomes interested.

The culmination of the story is both a triumph and a tragedy. The ending cannot be revealed here, but it is both fitting and lamentable.

Karoly Makk directs with quiet flair. The speech of the Selznok chairman is a moving 'history of Hungary in the 20th century', seen through the eyes of one peasant. Winter imagery surrounds the characters, representing the iron-hard clutch of sterile Stalinism. In perfect keeping with the period, the film has a classy jazz score.

Verdict - First-rate politico-sexual parable.