It is 1913, nearing the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and on the eve of the First World War. Írisz Leiter (a haunting Juli Jakab) is a hat maker who returns to Budapest years after being fostered under mysterious circumstances. Her parents had been respected milliners, owners of a shop bearing their name and who served both the wealthy and aristocracy. A whispered secret about why they’re no longer there casts a sinister pall over the shop. When Írisz tries to get work, the new owner is unsettled by her reappearance and politely, but firmly, buys her a ticket to leave the city. But Írisz doesn’t do anything she is told and soon finds herself pulled into the city’s dark turmoil and a mystery about her past. As the plot becomes less linear, the film’s dark beauty intensifies, Mátyás Erdély’s 35mm photography seems to contain distilled essence of half century of European arthouse cinema and an increasingly disquieting and anxious score suggests a darkness of the soul. Favouring poetry over the literal, Nemes’ gives us a fugue-like meditation on the end of an empire; the brilliantly wilful Írisz our witness to the flickering innocence of a Europe about to be plunged into hell.
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