Katalin Varga

't easy to follow, since a lot of the plot and background story is told little by little.

But the visuals is enough to watch this film. The cinematography and composition is something I haven't seen in a while. I gather the film was shot on 16mm, but that doesn't bother at all. On the contrary, it gives a small personality to the film.

The only weaknesses which I found were in the script. It's somehow difficult to follow, although understandable. But, because it was difficult to follow, it was difficult to get emotionally attached.

But as an art house film, it is a must see. Maybe not for the big public, but for the film buff.

I enjoyed Peter Strickland's 'Berberian Sound Studio' from 2012, and this film made by him 3 years earlier is just as good, if not better. It has a strange tone - almost like a 1970s Agnes Varda film, but it's set in Romania in present day. It's extremely erie in places and very beautifully shot in the Carpathian mountains about a woman with nothing left to lose out for vengeance. It also features a superb (but disturbing) monologue midway through the film from lead actress Hilda Peter.

Obviously filmmaker Strickland has a special interest in women's world. Hilda Péter is simply brilliant as the strong willed woman, giving it a mythical inner power and carries the whole show. Shot in 17 days, the movie has the stamp of a genius inspiration. I think it would easily be considered masterpiece in case it was part of a grander philosophical undertaking.

When the husband of the eponymous Katalin Varga learns that he is not the father of their ten year old son, Orban, he throws her out and demands that she leaves their village. She departs with Orban, telling him that they are going to see his sick grandmother. She has other plans though; Orban wasn't the result of an infidelity but of rape and now she intends to have her revenge. This is something that will have unintended consequences and put her in danger.

Usually when revenge is the subject of a film there will be lots of action before a righteous avenger slays the villainous character who wronged them. This is very different; there is little in the way of action but that is more than made up for in atmosphere. The rural Romanian setting is beautiful and in turns idyllic and oppressive depending on the location and even the weather. This is a world where ancient meets modern; Katalin travels in a horse drawn cart but characters have mobile phones. Hilda Péter does a great job as Katalin, a character who is rarely off screen; the scene where she talks about what happened to her is particularly effecting. The supporting cast are solid too; most notably Tibor Pálffy who plays the man she most wants revenge against... a character that is more sympathetic than one might expect. Overall I'd definitely recommend the melancholically beautiful film.

Peter Strickland's debut movie Katalin Varga reminds me very much of another recent British film, Asif Kapadia's 2007 effort Far North, which is also a folk horror story about an outcast and her child. Stickland uses the dank forest of Romania instead of the perilous ice flows of the north, but the movies are birds of a feather, low budget movies intended to tap primal energies.

Children run away from Katalin Varga, a darkly pretty woman with live-wire eyes, who's altogether too spirited to remain unmolested in the time-capsuled world with which the movie presents te viewer. Folk have mobile phones, but Katalin still travels by horse-drawn cart, and men still make hay in the fields with pitchforks. Gossip in Katalin's village is poisonous enough to make Clouzot's vision in Le Corbeau appear positively made of marshmallow. Following the repurcussions of gossip regarding Katalin's past, she travels with her child into an apparently infrastructure-less hinterland on a dark mission, like black lightning.

It's no surprise to find, following shot after shot of foreboding nature scenes, that this is a tragedy, in a cul-de-sac structure similar to Monte Hellman's brilliant 1965 movie Ride in the Whirlwind.

It's a brutal movie, in structure rather than in screen violence, which there is remarkably little of, and which is generally obscured in incoherence when it occurs. It's almost senseless and left me with a directionless primitive anger.