Saturday 7 November 2009

Katalin Varga

‘Katalin Varga’ is set in ‘upbeat’ Transylvania, Romania.

Katalin lives in a remote Transylvanian village with her husband and her son. However her husband has found out her big secret and throws her out. So Katalin, together with her 10-year-old, take to the road on a horse drawn cart.



She decides to track down a chap called Gergely, a man who was an accessory when she was raped 10 years ago. A rape that produced her Son. She extracts out of him where she might find her actual assailant before she bludgeons him to death with a rock.

When she finds the man, Antal, but both he and his wife are very friendly towards her. They take both her and her son in. We find out that they have been unable to produce children of their own but they don’t know which of them is at fault. Katalin has a pretty good idea.



She recounts her whole story to them when she is taken on a boat trip by the couple, although she omits names. Katalin has clearly come to kill Antal but things take a twist when his wife works it out. Then to complicate matters further, Katalin herself is being pursued by the brother of the first man she killed, in an act of counter revenge.



It’s a dark movie, in terms of mood as well as subject matter and quite brutal too when the violence comes but it was also at times difficult to follow and to fully understand people motives. This was a shame because the story had potential. I mean, why wait for 10 years if it was all so important to her. Why come to kill them, wouldn’t some other form of retribution had been better? Throughout the film I never felt like I was rooting for her. The film ends with two more deaths, neither of which particularly added up to me, but still, not bad though and it certainly scores points for being gloomy.

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