Love can be a ghost story or a Rorschach test. Or perhaps just losing your mind. Returning to Budapest from the United States seeking a new relationship with a brief acquaintance whom she is convinced is the love of her life, Márta rushes to their agreed upon rendezvous at the Liberty Bridge. But this film, as the vagaries of its title suggest, resists simple romantic gestures. What unfolds for Márta is a quietly noir-inflected exploration of uncertainty. Does she love this man? Who is he really? Glimpses of János hover at the periphery for Márta, whether through a bus window or as a face in a crowd at a concert. Is this János, or some other man? Is János a construct? Soft focused images of nondescript facial features—so many brown-haired, bearded men to be seen—underline Márta’s uncertainty, both in what she desires and how she views the world. The camera and editing lean into this, interspersed psychiatric evaluations casting the shadow of a doubt on the veracity or nature of Márta’s mental state. She winds through monotonous, circular hallways or ascends spiral staircases, a subtly Lynchian sensibility to these moments creating even more of a dreamlike atmosphere. But is János’ ephemeral presence suggestive of an illusion, or is this just an extremely depressed woman living in a barely furnished, shabby apartment trying to find a concrete, external explanation for the emotions with which she’s struggling? Their relationship at points feels like the ink-blot exam that her psychiatrist administers: mirrored bodies imitating one another, each reaching out in imitation as they try to grapple with separate issues. They walk on opposite sides of the street, coy and avoidant. And when it comes to sex, they must first copy one another from far sides of the room before converging. Sometimes János is just what Márta wants, a quietly warm and reassuring presence with whom she can role-play the domestic couple as they search for furniture. But elsewhere she cannot bear to face him, lest it make her complicated feelings too unbearable. The final image is a strange one, but oddly compelling in this sense. An audio speaker being brought into Márta’s apartment, too large for the doorway, is instead hoisted up to go through a window. It hangs there, outside the window, dangling from a rope slung over a pole. The speaker is a gift from János, a gesture of goodwill and a tacit implication of a hope for a deeper relationship. But it’s just stranded there. Will it be welcomed inside, or will it crash down onto the street? Perhaps that’s not something Márta can control at this moment.
A single piece of music haunts the film. I believe it’s the Schubert Lied “Die Forelle.” It represents Márta’s fixation on János (as he sang it in a childhood concert which she watches recordings of repeatedly) and informs in deconstructed sense the score. This sort of dissection is exactly what Márta seeks to do with the relationship, though it isn’t like one of her neurosurgery cases.
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