Forest

Review by Cathy Edsey Collins

for Reel Movie Critic

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Cast

Rita Braun Katalin Voros, Marton Tamas

Barbara Csonka Gabor Diossi Dusan Vitanovics

Edit Lipscei Balint Kenyeres Laszio Ziffer

Katalin Meszaros Peter Felix Matyassi Juli Szephelyi

Ilka Sos Peter Pfenig Fanni Szoljer

Barbara Thurzo Lajos Szakacs

Written and Directed by Benedek Fliegauf. A drama from Hungary with English subtitles. Running time: 90 minutes. Not rated.

Newcomer Benedek Fliegauf garnered multiple film festival awards for his debut filmmaking effort with this haunting episodic glimpse into troubled lives.

"Forest" begins with a wordless sequence of a crowd of people entering a public building, perhaps a shopping mall. They swing through the glass doors, the camera pausing on some faces momentarily before moving on to the next. Rumbling, non-music noises accompany this curious beginning. This section concludes as a bespectacled man puts a backpack against a wall.

Abruptly we are confronted with an angry young woman questioning a man about his unexpected presence and his dog. Through inference we decide that this man is a stranger who wants her to take his dog. The scene is done totally in close-up, the setting completely out of the frame. This in-your-face style continues throughout "Forest," which delves into seven different vignettes - all filmed primarily in close-ups, for maximum disturbing effect that results in a sense of claustrophobia.

A father adamantly expresses his concern about his maturing 10 year-old daughter to his wife, only to have the conversation morph into an unsettling diatribe about "her nipples swelling." Clearly more is going on here than meets the eye.

That is the hallmark of this impressive film. Characters are never named, settings are never made clear. Although the film is almost entirely dialogue-driven, with little action, background information is non-existent. All that is offered is the a few skeletal clues and the link that each vignette seems to deal with a relationship. It is frustrating and intriguingly mysterious. Two men talking about something they have acquired-a car, a person? It is never shown - only the faces of the men revealed.

A spooky sense of uncertainty permeates the film. A young woman lying in bed with her boyfriend/husband (?) begins a seemingly benign conversation, only to have it transform into a revelation of a bad dream and a dead baby.

"Forest" - a title that harkens to the old expression of "not seeing the forest for the trees"- is gem that begs for discussion. When this all-too-short movie concludes with a repeat of the first crowd scene, we realize that these faces are now familiar to us and their troubled faces hold a totally different meaning after this eerie visit into their lives .