Annie's Staff Pick
On Body and Soul
Winner of the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear award, this is a highly unusual, but very sweet love story.
Director: Ildikó Enyedi
Cast includes: Géza Morcsányi, Alexandra Borbély
116 Mins / 2017 / Hungary, Subtitles
This strange, unsettling romance, a Hungarian abattoir provides the backdrop for an affair between two workers that exists only when they sleep. Endre and Mária discover they share the same dreams where they meet in a forest as deer and fall in love. They decide to make their dreams come true but it's difficult in real life. This extraordinary film offers a lyrical, elliptical and rule-breaking charm.
Winner of the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival.
"Intriguing and original" - Little White Lies
"Striking, emotional drama" - ScreenDaily
"Witty, sensitive romance" - BFI
"A magical movie experience" - LA Times
From The Guardian:
"Endre (Géza Morcsányi) is the manager, a middle-aged man with a disabled arm and a drolly observant manner. His only friend, so far as this prickly and solitary man has friends, is HR supervisor Jenö (Zoltán Schneider), a beefy and hassled guy, forever being chivvied by his co-worker wife Zsuzsa (Zsuzsa Járó) with whom Endre once had a brief relationship. Endre’s eye is caught by a new person in the office: the delicately beautiful and shy young woman, Maria (Alexandra Borbély) who is the new hygiene inspector, examining the slaughtered beasts for signs of disease or excess fat. She radiates anxiety and loneliness and some Asperger mannerisms. Slowly and surely, Endre and Maria begin to fall in love. But they do this in the alternative universe of their dreams: they have the same, shared nightly dream, that they are deer wandering a snowy forest. We see this dream, and it is quite as real as anything else."
