Head for the hills: Hilda Peter as Katalin Varga
Directed by Peter Strickland. Starring Hilda Peter, Tibor Palffy, Norbert Tanko, Melinda Kantor. Club, IFI, Dublin, 82 min
FORGET YOUR zombies and your werewolves. Here’s a singular slice of Transylvanian melodrama that will really put the willies up you this Halloween. This bone-shuddering debut feature from Peter Strickland (a language teacher from, of all places, Reading) tells a tale of revenge set in the Hungarian- speaking section of that east European locale.
At times, Katalin Vargaleans towards folk cinema, but, with its growling, clattering soundtrack and unrelenting intimations of catastrophe, the film never toys with elegant inactivity or pastoral idealism. The Ingmar Bergman of The Virgin Springmight have recognised a kindred spirit.
The picture begins with Katalin (Hilda Peter), resident of a rough- hewn rural village, confronted by her husband about some vaguely explained earlier misdeed. It soon becomes clear that the couple’s child was sired by another man and, after enduring a tongue- lashing, Katalin takes the boy and heads for the looming hills. She has, it seems, a mind to exact belated retribution on the man who ruined her life.
It would be interesting to know what a rural Transylvanian made of Katalin Varga. To a foreigner's eyes, the region, as presented here, appears to have changed little since Vlad the Impaler walked its valleys. Katalin and her boy do own a mobile phone, but, travelling by horse and cart on largely deserted roads, they encounter few other manifestations of modern science. At one point, we hear a TV, but we don't actually get to see the thing.
This spare, quasi-medieval environment allows the film to take on the quality of a particularly gloomy fairytale – the sort where trolls eat children and grannies grow fangs. At times, the dialogue does, perhaps, become a little too melodramatic, but Strickland’s gift for a damp, insidious image and his taste for layering drones and rumbles beneath the action assure us that few concessions are being made to naturalism.
Like so many of the best debut features, Katalin Vargareminds the viewer of a dozen other great film-makers while still remaining very much its own sulky beast. It's the film of the week.
