Adoption

Based on the first 30 min, which was all I could take, this film, consisting mostly of chain smoking Hungarians earnestly and humorlessly conversing about motherhood and adoption, seems designed to repel viewers. C minus.

"Remarkably, she doesn't opt for a radical strategy to tackle the sexism issue head on, Kata, through Berek's sterling interpretation, who particularly resembles Helen Mirren but foregrounds her steely fortitude, unalloyed emotion to the fore with flying colors, is not designed to be a crusader, no banner is brandished, no rousing speech is required, she is a feminist fighter in the most pragmatical way, do the right thing within her capacity, she sees the problems (whether it is in the self-seeking Jóska or the national institution), but realistically, she is not in the right position to challenge the status quo, in lieu, she smartly capitalizes on her savoir-faire to get things undone, actions are louder than words, Kata is a heroine that we can all emulate."

read my full review on my blog: cinema omnivore

1st watched 7/10/2009 – 4 out of 10 (Dir-Marta Meszaros): Interesting but unsatisfying drama about a middle-aged woman wanting a child but unable to get one in her current situation. She is no longer married and her lover is married to another woman and doesn't want to have one with her. She's medically able and she longs for this. She befriends an orphan from an institution and looks into taking her in as a daughter but this never works out. The movie is about the woman's longing and the routes she has to go to fulfill this. The young girl really just encourages her feelings but the logistics don't make her addition possible. The story is very slow moving and the characters really aren't that appealing. I usually like European movies and their focus on the real drama but this reality isn't that exciting or interesting. It is also very hard to read the main character and she is played very stoicly through most of the movie. Good things happen in the movie, but it's hard to tell the way the movie is directed. Feelings seem to get lost in the ho-hum mix and that's where the movie fails, in my opinion.

One of the great films about women made by a woman, Marta Meszaros' "Adoption" is about the most fundamental need of many women, to be a mother. Kata is a 43 year old widow, living alone but having an affair with a married man who is not prepared to leave his wife. One day she asks him to father a child with her, which she will raise alone, but he refuses. Then she meets Anna, a young girl from the local boarding school, who asks Kata if she can use her house to meet her boyfriend. A friendship develops between them that might lead to all their problems being solved.

Meszaros shoots her film mostly in close-ups as if by focusing on these faces we are also getting inside their heads. It's an unusual treatment of an unusual subject, one that in an American film would have been sentimentalised out of all proportion. As Kata, Katalin Berek is extraordinarily good and the director, one-time wife of Miklos Jansco, never deviates from the intensity of her subject, making this a deeply moving film. Not much seen these days, this remains a key film of the seventies.

Beautiful black and white cinematography full of close-ups and the depiction of faces, details and of factory workers. Good acting depicting a sudden relationshipt that arises and develops between an unmarried woman who wants a baby (and her married boyfriend does not) and a teenager who has been abandoned by her parents and wants to marry her boyfriend. By helping and listening the latter, the former understands better her own situation and makes decisive decisions. I am not entirely convinced about the development of any of these two characters, and the so much mentioned troubled life of the girl and the labour condition of the woman seem not to seriously influence their attitude along the story. Script perhaps does not show enough coherence (the slap being the most gratuitous moment, perhaps) despite the slow time dedicated to dialogues.