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The witty, whimsical debut of Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi is about the strange entwined fates of separated twins at the turn of the century

Hungarian film-maker Ildikó Enyedi won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival last year with On Body and Soul, and now UK audiences get the chance to see her debut feature, which was an award-winner at Cannes 30 years ago. My 20th Century is a jeu d’ésprit, a whimsical erotic fantasia of central Europe, a millennial meditation on modernity, all in black-and-white and infused with the spirit of early cinema, with distinct touches of Buster Keaton and a playful attitude to sex, comparable to Milan Kundera.

Polish actor Dorota Segda plays two twins, Dora and Lili, who suffered grinding poverty as little girls and sold matches in the streets. Then they were stolen by two sinister top-hatted gentlemen, separated, and after childhoods of abuse that we can only guess at,...

Ildikó Enyedi's On Body and Soul (2017) is having its exclusive online premiere on Mubi in the United Kingdom. It is showing from November 17 - December 17, 2017.Sex and violence are probably considered to be the most hotly contested controversial topics in film, from the hand-wringing parent who worries about exposing their kids too soon to blood and gore to governmental censorship boards editing out onscreen kisses. This isn’t to say that extreme levels of gore and gratuitously hardcore sex don’t merit discussions (see anything from the New French Extremity genre to the perennially talked about Baise-Moi). But there is, however, another film “quality” that ignites ire and repulsion faster than a close-up of an exploding head or a cut-to of cunnilingus: whimsy. Whimsy, that which is held to be quaint, playful, heartfelt and sweet, is often derided as superficial, saccharine. And, to be fair, it often is. Having...