Liza, a rókatündér

Had to write this after seeing a cruddy review from some local misery guts who waffled on forever and ever about how bad it was. Long reviews are generally an indicator of little to say along with a sense of self importance. Well Liza was a great film in my opinion. The movie, if fantasy fairy tales are your thing, is a well written, beautifully visualised and made European film. There aren't reams of dialogue to put off those who don't like subs, just enough to move the plot and produce gags. The casting is faultless. God bless the Hungarians for financing it's production. To invoke the awful Hollywood cliché that invariably stops me from seeing movies, it is a 'Timeless Classic', Much like 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. I recommenced it, it's funny and entranced me and will do many others for decades.

This movie is absolutely stunning. Finally the Hungarians made their own "Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain" mixed with the "L'écume des jours". Very good sense of (grotesque)humour, drama, love story and music. The main character and all the supporting actors are well casted.

And the soundtrack is worth to mention also, from the Japanese pop- track to the melancholic background music or the closing Finnish song (Loituma polka) fits perfectly.

The only con is that the English translation cannot bring back the literary usage of the hungarian language. They tried the best, but sometimes the English language isn't "enough".

10/10.

Liza the Fox Fairy follows a woman named Liza who is best friends with the ghost of a Japanese popstar. One day she gets cursed becomes a fox fairy, which means that anyone who falls in love with her will die.

I'm just going to get this out of the way, this movie is very unique. The concept alone should be enough to pique your interest. If it somehow doesn't, well, it makes me wonder who hurt you.

Putting the concept aside, how well is it presented? If you ask me, it's very well presented. For starters, the comedy is great. It's full of often dark, often goofy, often overly-anime-Japanese-ish comedy and everything still feels like it's in the right place. Yeah, I don't get it either. But trust me, the humor is pretty great.

The soundtrack is actually pretty good, and it adds yet another surreal-weird layer to the film.

The characters are weird and interesting, and fit the movie perfectly.

The whole movie is pretty unpredictable too, as it is a very unconventional movie so you as the audience really has no idea where it's going. Unless you've already seen it, of course.

Overall Liza the Fox Fairy is weird, but it's hilarious and unique and yet nothing about it is out of place. It's a movie you have to see to believe. In the end I would definitely recommend this movie.

This movie starts like a fairy-tale, and retains this style throughout: Liza is a simple young (well, she's hitting 30) girl who hasn't found her dream prince yet. She's working in a fictional Budapest as a live-in nurse for an elderly lady, who teaches her Japanese because she used to be the wife of the Japanese ambassador. Did I mention that it's a very complex fairy tale? Simple Liza reads her favourite Japanese novel over and over, listens to J-Pop and dreams about meeting her prince over a crab burger, just like in the novel. One day, a Japanese pop star from the Sixties appears to her, and they both shake it out. Liza manages to get two hours off to go to a burger joint, which is the closest thing to the crab burger joint of her dreams. While she's gone, her ward dies, killed by the only seemingly innocuous spirit of a Japanese pop singer, Tomy Tano. Liza inherits the flat, but the evil spirit is now jealous of her quest for a dream lover. Many good men, and some mediocre ones, die, and Liza's only explanation for this is that she is a fox-fairy, a Japanese mythological figure of a young, attractive woman who is inevitably killing off all of her suitors ...

This is a very odd, very complex and very well made movie in the style of Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain about a young woman finding happiness. I especially enjoyed the subcosmos of equally erstwhile as well as fictional J-pop star Tomy Tano, he seemed to be living in an eternally hip and fun world of great tunes and swinging moves.

Liza, the Fox-fairy is one of the most pleasant surprises I ever had watching a Hungarian movie. The cinematography and scenery were beautiful, the actors did an excellent job. The idea of adding Japanese pop culture and mythology to a fictional capitalistic 70's Hungarian scenery might seem a little far fetched at first, but it really works well. The story was captivating.

Most reviewers mention Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 'Amélie' and Wes Anderson's movies as probable inspirations. I have to agree, but these influences are not explicit at all, they stay on a vibe level. Also I have to add, it's way darker than those movies and that it has more of a 'Delicatessen' mood, (also) a Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro movie.

Anyway, if you like weird love stories with dark twists and dark humor you should definitely give this movie a chance.