Recalling the films of Russia's Yevgeni Bauer, Alexander Antalffy's "Lulu" is a romantic melodrama, shot realistically, for adults with an attitude towards character and performance that defies black and white explanation of motive.
The IMDB's description of the film would seem to indicate Lulu, played by Erna Morena, is a femme fatale but the beguiling insouciance she evinces during her more seductive scenes is belied by her more complicated and pointed reactions to the problems others either suffer in relation to her and even the problems she feels they might. From the description you might think the film is in the neighborhood of The Blue Angel but this is not a woman who wants to bring anyone down. Further, by the end of the film, whether she or anyone else has done anything wrong would seem to be an open question for each viewer and more complex issues of the society's faulty or bygone mores comes to the fore.
Filled with lavish, ornate balls in mansions as well as bars and public spaces that seem to be shot on authentic locations, Antalffy shoots many of the scenes in long shot with everything in focus and there are many scenes with large numbers of extras performing naturalistic bits of business from the foreground to the background. However, the camera is not static and the editing is fairly advanced. There is one beautiful shot that starts in mid closeup with Erna Morena sharing half the frame with her window to the outside world. The shot follows a letter and is a moving shot that is zooming out from its first moment and is not unlike many of the shots in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.
While the film's plot is simple to follow, one challenge is the somewhat inexplicable absence of title cards in a couple of scenes that are basically just characters speaking to each other.
As of now, this film needed a review and only six people have given it a vote. Also, as of now, you can see this film on Youtube and I'd suggest you do so before someone petty business interest has it taken down. Also, if you don't know, you can use auto-translate as I did to convert it from the Spanish it has to English or many other languages--this used to not work well but has come a long way and was fine with this film aside from an occasional incorrect pronoun usage.
