QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN
The story begins in Budapest in the year of 1980. Handsome Peter (Tamás Kovács) and András (Zsombor Kövesi) are best friends and rockers. They play in a band, and dream of making it to the West with their meagre four-song portfolio. One day, András convinces Peter to travel East to the Kalotaszeg region of Romania, near Cluj Napoca, which is mostly inhabited by ethnic Hungarians (despite being set virtually in its entirety in Romania, you won’t hear much of the Romance language in this movie). The objective is to marry Peter to his beautiful cousin Kati (Franciska Törőcsik), and to rescue her from the rural conservatism into the far more cosmopolitan capital of Hungary. In exchange, Peter can buy the guitar of his dreams. Additionally, they smuggle cigarettes and other goods into the neighbouring country, thereby ensuring that their trip is useful in more ways than one.
An initially hesitant Peter agrees to marry Kati after seeing her in real flesh. He suggests: “can’t we just skip the marriage and go straight into the honeymoon?”. While in Romania, they have to put up with another marriage, namely an arranged one: Kati’s sister’s. The wedding is the film’s most engaging and insightful part. The extremely traditional celebration involves picking the right bride from a selection of colourful candidates (including old women and heavily moustached males hiding their face behind a veil; sadly the movie never confronts this grotesque display of homophobia, sexism and ageism), and abundant folk dancing. It is the males who must shake their booty in order to attract the attention of the women, in an energetic display of masculinity. These moves could occasionally lapse into duel (particularly after the skilled Gyuri – played by Barabás Rohonyi -, who is in love with Kati, realises that his fling is about to elope). The red colour of the extravagant costumes also deserves a praise.
Some very specific cultural knowledge is required in order to understand the subtleties of Hungarian Wedding. For example, Peter and Andras are warned: “this is what we do to people from Budapest”. Those little familiar with Hungarian culture will be left wondering what is it that ethnic Hungarians in Romania find so offensive about their Budapest cousins. Those without the knowledge that Romania possesses a large Hungarian minority will find it strange that Peter and Andras continue to speak their native language long after they crossed the border.
At 93 minutes, Hungarian Wedding offers viewers lighthearted and uncompromising fun, devoid of any socio-political connotations (subversive film practices are not welcomed under the watch of far-right tyrant Viktor Orban). The ending is predictably doused in saccharine, with a car chase, a cliffhanger (in the literal and the figurative sense) and a twist that you can see coming from 1,000 miles.
Another shortcoming of this mostly pleasant and culturally relevant – however derivative – movie is that the topic of rock’n roll upon which the beginning of the film is constructed (so much that various scenes close to a guitar riff) never comes full circle. Not even when it is given the right opportunity to do so in the last five minutes of the movie (once the equilibrium is once again established, and the characters find redemption). It feels like a narrative flaw, as well as a missed opportunity to examine the repercussions of subversive rock in the Communist Europe – especially as the entire story is built upon music.
Hungarian Wedding just premiered in the Official Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
