Lora

Gabor Herendi's first film, the delightful Valami Amerika, featured three brothers and their inability to see a visitor to Hungary for who he really is. The narrative bounced effortlessly among different points of view and worked music and song seamlessly worked into the storyline.In Herendi's new film, Lora, two brothers are in love with the same woman. Making one of the brothers a performing musician enables Herendi to continue exploring the use of actual (not sound track) music in the narrative process. The narrative, as in his first film, is all about seeing, but where the characters in the first film could not penetrate an identity,the title character in this film is blind to her entire world--she has been struck by hysterical blindness after a tragic event. Her condition is both real and symbolic. Even while she could see, she was blind to her lover's infidelities, her friend's betrayal, and above all, the genuine love of the "other" brother. What makes this second film a more mature, a more complex, a more substantial film is Herendi's ability to show how his character, amidst her blindness, learns finally to see.

The film opens and closes with Lora at the psychiatrist's office, prepared to be hypnotized for a final attempt at freeing her from her self-imposed blindness, and the narrative stays mostly in the present, as the former museum guide manages a successful second career as a wine expert. But as Herendi tells blind Lora's story, he intertwines with it the back-story—how she came to her blindness. The "before" and "after" stories merge smoothly, often with matched cuts between past and present. While there are moments of surprise as Lora opens a door in the present and we find her with a character in the earlier story, there is no disorientation. The narrative is smooth despite the periodic switches into the back-story, enabling him to present the past dramatically. While technically flashbacks, the scenes retain setting, sound (especially music as live performance), action, and other elements in both time frames, creating this uninterrupted narrative.

The film is described as a comedy, and it is characterized by many moments of genuine humor, especially in the banter among the members of the group that includes Lora's great admirer and near-lover, her boyfriend's younger brother. There are also moments of black humor that involve an urn, repeated gags about the father's apartment, and rather sweet exchanges between the musician brother and Lora. Herendi handled visual gags well in Valami Amerika, and he offers some variations here of what worked earlier. A favorite is punishing the uninvited visitor by shocking her. In all, the romantic story is handled well. Though blind, Lora is a feisty, self-sufficient character who generates admiration rather than pity. If anything, she manages almost too well, needing to decide if in fact real sight was not the factor that had prevented insight! The apparently ambiguous ending can actually be deciphered fairly easily and in no way prevents the viewer from feeling completely satisfied by the film. The supporting acting is uniformly excellent, from the sexual predator of the older brother (a reprise from the earlier film), to the faithful younger brother, the grieving father, the faithless girl friend, Lora's boss and hopeful swain, and others. The subtitles are excellent, with one quibble: Hungarian curses are varied and legend, but the translation aims for the English idiom with its "screw you" or "F you," abandoning the delight of the carefully crafted Hungarian maledictions.

First of all, I do not understand why not a Hungarian girl was playing the role of Lora. It is really disturbing that she is translated back to Hungarian.

Furthermore the movie is full of dull stereotypes, cheap jokes. Nice looking artistic girl after three years still suffering from the dead of his over-self-confident boyfriend, who was cheating on her with her best friend. The younger brother brings back her to life.

There is everything in it you need to call a movie liberal lesbian, gay club, rabbi, catholic priest quite few blind person.

It was a complete waste of time to watch.

I saw the movie yesterday in the theater. It was Valentines day, and i took my girlfriend with me. It was a enjoyable movie, with great jokes, but also has for his audience a few tragic moments. This hungarian movie was unique, thanks to Lucia Brawley play, and to the great script. The story has a lot of flashbacks, the writers of this movie must be love Lost. I loved the previous works of Herendi Gabor, Valami Amerika, and Magyar Vándor, but this is far more different. The photography was like in a Michael Bay-Tony Scott film. Beautiful. Just like Lucia. Heartwarming and cute. Anyway, it was great. I give it 10/8.

We've seen the trailer of this movie and said "no way". A friend told us to watch it anyway, so we tried.

It is completely unlike its trailer. It's good. What I expect from a drama: contains sad moments, happy moments, jokes and deep thoughts; it was not a completely dark, depressing movie at all. It is understandable why they didn't force the fact that this movie "is about the love life a blind person", because in reality it was not really, and I acknowledge that it would be very hard to make a trailer which could suggest the overall feeling of the movie.

The chronology is interesting, as we gradually get to know what already have happened, and it is rarely distracting. The acting is good (with lots of good supporting characters), the characters all felt real, but not overacted and exaggerated, as most of todays Hungarian movies do.

This one was well above the other Hungarian releases of nowadays, free of mindless jokes and funny acting but still not being overly heavy and depressing. (And maybe the best thing was about it the lack of the popcorn-munching people, so I suppose the movie is not for those people expecting an average Saturday evening light waste of time.)

My wife and I saw Lora last night and we both loved it. She was struck by the genuineness of Lucia Brawley's performance; in my wife's words, "she was three-dimensional." I agree. Though portions of the plot take dips into darker human emotion and character, Lora's smile and the subtle crescendo of love keep the movie out of the melancholic. Unlike a previous commenter, I had no trouble with Lucia's lack of Hungarian dialogue nor did it seem like the language issue effected the cast. In fact, there seemed to be real chemistry amongst the cast which made for a overall cohesion storyline and energy. As viewers we have very little insight into the whys of filmaking perhaps we should be more concerned with the end product. If the dubbing was distracting to some I suspect that the subtitles were to others. Too often we get caught up in searching for imperfection and identifying things we disagree with, i.e. a movie's use of liberal imagery, subtitling or dubbing. Too bad...because you missed a great movie.