Serious Things (2010)

The film's directed by Szonja Szabó, who is a graduate of the Hungarian Film Academy's Television director class of 2007. She made Komoly dolgok ('Serious stuff') in 2010. It is her first feature-length film. Previously she directed several short films and two documentaries. Szerafina (2007) is an adaptation of a László Darvasi short story, this work tries to speak against the glorification of being single, and show the dangers of the exaggerated fear of commitment. Her 2009 short Roadmovie is maybe her most consistent work until now. It tells the story of a young man and a young woman. The woman is in love with an older married man, and is sad because he fails to phone him. The young man gives her company on the way to post a letter to her lover, and seems happy doing so. It was a wise decision to choose two actors who had worked together before and knew each other well, because their often improvised, real and lively dialogues play a very important role in the film. As all of her works are extremely low budget Szonja Szabó often performs in various roles, as a director, screenwriter and this time she photographed the film as well. Komoly dolgok is three times as long as Roadmovie and occasionally we can feel it. The director can easily conduct her stories throughout a short film to make them concise, well-paced and complete, but in the case of her first feature film she fails to make it as consistent as her earlier works. Komoly dolgok is a story of three young adults after their school leaving exams. They don't travel anywhere for the summer, they spend their time among the familiar blocks of flats, familiar working class people, and they try to solve any coming 'serious stuff'. One of them is Szonja (played by Piroska Móga from Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution), a young violinist who has a relationship with her teacher. This teacher is a much-older, married man (the same motive as in Roadmovie). The other (Gergely Goitein) is a young pastry cook, who loves his job, and loves Szonja, but he is too scared to show the latter (fear of commitment, a motive from Szerafina). The third one (Lambert Tóth) is a young guy, who has to find out what to do with his life before his sister and her soon-to-be husband unloads him from their flat. The film gives us some likable characters and stronger performances from the actors, but the cast as well as the complexity of the characters is way too uneven. Some of them are well-written and lifelike, but some are a bit caricaturistic, or just simple clichés. The movie has some remarkable moments, but the way how it presents the life in these parts of Budapest is the same as it has already been shown several times.(Since then, Szonja Szabó finished her next short film Tune, which follows the way how Inárritu connects seemingly random people's lives together. It is a beautifully photographed film, but much less thoughtful and personal than the previous ones.)