Movie Review: On Body and Soul

On Body and Soul *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Ildikó Enyedi.

Written by: Ildikó Enyedi.

Starring: Géza Morcsányi (Endre), Alexandra Borbély (Mária), Zoltán Schneider (Jenö), Ervin Nagy (Sanyi), Tamás Jordán (Mária's doctor), Zsuzsa Járó (Zsuzsa), Réka Tenki (Klára), Júlia Nyakó (Rózsi).

 

On Body and Soul is a strange film – certainly one of the strangest to be nominated for a Foreign Language Film Oscar in the last few years. The Academy often appreciates foreign films that feel like Hollywood films, just in another language (this year’s The Insult is very much like that) – but On Body and Soul, from Hungary’s Ildikó Enyedi is one of the odder films you’ll see this. The film takes some weird tonal and narrative shifts as it shifts gears through its nearly two hour run time – not all of them work, admittedly – but you admire the effort that went into them anyway.

 

The film takes place at a Budapest slaughterhouse. Endre (Géza Morcsányi) is the de facto boss, although he’s really just an equivalent to a CFO for the place. When they hire a new quality control supervisor, Maria (Alexandra Borbély), he is drawn to her – she is a beautiful blonde woman after all – but so is so painfully shy and introverted that their conversations don’t go anywhere. But when some drugs are stolen, and it’s clear an inside job, the cops suggest they hire a psychologist to interview all the employees. The psychologist (Reka Tenki) discovers that both Endre and Maria are having the same dreams – that they are the pair of deers we’ve been seeing throughout – and thinks the two are mocking her. They aren’t however – they are somehow sharing their strange dreams.

 

I won’t go on more about the plot – it does some odd twists and turns throughout the runtime, not all of them convincing. In particular, I wish that Maria was a little bit more well-rounded than she turns out being – she gets off to an interesting start here, but in the last act in particular, the film tries to “explain” her issues more than it needs to, and makes her less interesting as a result.

 

But even if I wasn’t always sold on the narrative, you have to admire the filmmaking through, which is exceptional. This is Ildikó Enyedi’s return to feature filmmaking after an 18-year absence, but she has lost none of her chops in that time. The camera is slow moving, or stationary throughout the film, but doesn’t look away at anything that happens. The film does take place in a slaughterhouse, and if you don’t want to see cows being killed there, then this isn’t your movie (the end credits say that while animals were harmed during filming, none of them were harmed because of the film – meaning essentially, they were just allowed to film cows that were already going to be killed anyway. I’m not quite sure these scenes were necessary – they are there to shock after all, but it’s been nearly 70 years since Georges Franju’s infamous documentary short Le sang des betes (1949), and many other films in that time have showed basically the same thing. It’s still disturbing to watch sure, and it offers a contrast to the more subdued story, but still.

 

The film, is many ways, a rather subtle, subdued love story. Like Phantom Thread, it is about two damaged people, who make not make sense without anyone except each other – but adds in an interesting question if these two are right for each other only in their dreams. Ultimately, I’m not quite sure where all this ends up in the film – it almost feels like Enyedi writes herself into a corner, and can’t quite figure a way out. Still, the film is beautifully film, and very well-acted – and one of the stranger films of the year. Movies don’t need to answer all the questions they raised – they’re often better that way.