„I think I made you up inside my head.”

Lili Hor­vat’s sec­ond fea­ture film, after THE WEDNESDAY CHILD from 2015, has one of the most cum­ber­some titles in recent years: PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME (ON DEMAND AT GO EAST FILM FESTIVAL until April 28, 2021). Or in the Hun­gar­i­an orig­i­nal: FELKÉSZÜLÉS MEGHATÁROZATLAN IDEIG TARTÓ EGYÜTTLÉTRE. The film begins with a quote from a poem by the Amer­i­can poet Sylvia Plath, which sets the mood of the film: „I think I made you up inside my head.”

Almost forty-year-old Már­ta Vizy is a suc­cess­ful neu­ro­sur­geon. 19 or 20 years ago she emi­grat­ed from Hun­gary to the USA. She met her Hun­gar­i­an col­league János Drexler at a con­gress in the USA. Mar­ta falls in love with him, she is deeply con­vinced that he is exact­ly the right man for her. And then she has the idea of ​​leav­ing her career in the USA behind and return to Budapest to meet him. Both make an appoint­ment – roman­ti­cal­ly – a month lat­er – with­out exchang­ing con­tact details – at the Lib­er­ty Bridge in Budapest, at 5 p.m., on the Pest side. First she’s stay­ing in a hotel, and she’s get­ting ready for the date. But Mar­ta waits in vain for János at the Lib­er­ty Bridge. She starts to get ner­vous and calls him at his place of work in the hos­pi­tal, but she does not reach him. When she finds him, he claims he does­n’t even know her. She’s col­laps­ing, lit­er­al­ly. She wants to go back to the USA, but turns back at the air­port. She is con­vinced that János is not deny­ing her, but that he real­ly did not rec­og­nize her. Már­ta uses old con­tacts to be able to work at the clin­ic where János also works, although she is actu­al­ly com­plete­ly overqual­i­fied for the job. She moves into a run-down apart­ment – with a view of the Lib­er­ty Bridge. She starts research­ing his life and spies on him, but she also goes into psy­cho­log­i­cal treat­ment. And then the day comes when the two meet in the clin­ic. He remem­bers the strange encounter in which he had not rec­og­nized her. And in the future the two will meet more often…

In her first lead­ing role, the Hun­gar­i­an the­ater and film actress Natasa Stork plays a haunt­ing game about truth, real­i­ty, mad­ness and con­fu­sion – and love. Lili Hor­vat has suc­ceed­ed in cre­at­ing an impres­sive, allu­sive work that man­ages to draw the audi­ence in and leave them float­ing for a long time in the uncer­tain­ty as to whether what is hap­pen­ing is only hap­pen­ing in Márta’s imag­i­na­tion. Clev­er­ly, the sto­ry nev­er leaves any doubt that János real­ly isn’t a liar – and the film clev­er­ly avoids any excur­sions into the mys­ti­cal and the inex­plic­a­ble. The sto­ry of the film is locat­ed very firm­ly in the world of sci­ence, research and evi­dence. From this basic con­stel­la­tion, the ten­sion and the pull of the sto­ry devel­op. It is deeply sat­is­fy­ing that any branch­ing into the super­nat­ur­al, the cheap solu­tion offered by many such sto­ries, is sim­ply refused. For all the ten­sion that the sto­ry gen­er­ates, the film also empha­sizes the impor­tance of sci­ence and evi­dence. And with that it is some­how as well a polit­i­cal film.

PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME / FELKÉSZÜLÉS MEGHATÁROZATLAN IDEIG TARTÓ EGYÜTTLÉTRE

CAST: Natasa Stork, Vik­tor Bodó, Benett Vilmányi. DIRECTED BY Lily Hor­vath. 95 min­utes.

ON DEMAND until April 28, 2021
https://online.filmfestival-goeast.de/de/movies/339aa031-5af4-47da-b5fd-5da0c10b74e7