The Autumn 2014 selection of Müpamozi, the digital screening series from the Palace of Arts and the Hungarian National Digital Archives and Film Institute, poses the question of how desire, eroticism and nudity are shown in Hungarian film history. Is it truly Eros who is pulling the strings here? When are women shown undressed, and when are men? Do we see any joie de vivre in the erotic segments of these films? How is the medium of film able to treat words of erotic prose? What is erotic: total nudity, when only the shadow appears on the wall, or a silk slip slowly being pulled up over a garter belt? What is our culture of amorousness, and how does it interrelate with the depictions of reality that appear in film? What did Hungarian films use nudity for apart from erotic moments? Could love films be made today? András Réz's film club seeks the answers to these questions and more.

The recession at the start of the 1980s took on a specific form in the subculture of the time, with this tale of a love triangle becoming its most popular manifestation in film. In this bloody melodrama inhabited by the Trabant ensemble, a star pianist, a deaf and mute zoo-keeper and a blonde vamp make passionate and hopeless attempts to establish feeling, connections and communication between one person and another in the realm of the erotic. In the film, the sex act is not only aggressive and savage, but also portrays animals as a pleasure-enhancing element. The sex is far beyond anything that is individual or personal, and the two men merely serve as assistants to the woman. In this stoic and romantic tale of degeneration, Marietta Méhes becomes an inimitable vamp, whose affectations, musical amateurism and sign-language exchanges with her deaf-mute husband (Andor Lukáts) give this unique work a rare intensity.

Presented by: Palace of Arts, MaNDA