An overtly political return to his Hungarian roots following the previous year's foray into international co-production with Meeting Venus, Istvan Szabo gave us a decidedly bleak and deeply personal insight into his country's day-to-day post-communist existence, a seeming political free-for-all captured in microcosm at a Budapest school.
Cue lovely, doomed performances from Ter Steege and Borcsak as gentle waif Emma and silly clod Bobe respectively, a couple of country girls trained as Russian teachers who find themselves struggling to learn English and avoid the political brickbats hurled by their bickering colleagues. Unable to afford a flat, the pair share a room in a teachers' hostel, where Bobe bonks a number of foreigners and dreams of marrying well, while Emma ponders illicit love with her married headmaster (Andorai) and still believes in collectivity and a good community.
When Bobe is arrested for prostitution, however, Emma must snitch on her chum, as events inevitably take a tragic turn for the worse. Filmed with only too ghastly realism and loaded with painful post-communist angst, Szabo's story is a thoroughly grin affair that doesn't so much throb with life as gasp for every last breath.