SUNSET (2018)

Cast

Plot

This is the world according to Irisz Leiter (Juli Jakab), an emotionally withdrawn young woman who struggles to understand and re-join a (high) society that she was never really part of. Unlike most costume dramas, Sunset, a moving Hungarian character study set in Budapest during 1913 isn't a movie you can easily get lost in. The movie's disorienting and visually austere style takes some getting used to: dark, but warmly lit hand-held cameras draw viewers' attention beyond the immediate foreground (almost always in focus) towards the camera frame's out-of-focus background. That kind of showy, subjective camerawork is a little daunting (Can't I decide where I want to look for myself?). But I have to admit: by consistently denying viewers an objective God's eye of events, writer/director Lászlò Nemes (Son of Saul) also immediately establishes his movie's character-driven, low-key tense atmosphere. Irisz's point-of-view is sometimes a little stifling, and more than a little disorienting but it's also rather powerful. (Simon Abrams)