Review from New York Times by Roger Greenspun (link requires free registration)

Love tells the story of a young Hungarian woman whose husband has been arrested by the secret police and who eases the last months of his ancient bedridden mother with the fantastic tale that her son is in America seeing to the completion and premiere of his own motion picture.

In her youth, the old woman was used to some wealth and frivolous luxury, and to maintain the appearance of wealth and luxury, the daughter-in-law gives up her time, her energy, and most of her material possessions. Love thus deals not only with several kinds of love, but also with a history of heroic, exceptionally skillful devotion.

Sustaining the illusions of middle- and upper-class old folk has been the concern of many Eastern European movies over the years. But I find Love unique, not because it breaks new ground, but because it has such superb appreciation of emotions and responses already understood. Subtle, rich, reserved, even elegant, it is a beautiful movie. Although never sentimental, it is about sentiment and also about a code of values. Surrounded by her books and mementos, propped and somewhat pampered on her bed, the old woman all but dreams her life away. A great and intelligent beauty in her youth (and, as played by Lili Darvas, a greatly refined beauty in old age), she relives her past and imagines the present as if it were the past; she asks after her doctor—so she may discuss Goethe with him in German.

Meanwhile, her son, serving ten years for his politics, sits in prison. And his wife scrimps and patches, humors the old woman, and puts the best face possible on the seeping ruin of her own life. An actress named Mari Torocsik plays the wife, a marvellously controlled and complete characterization, with an open-eyed and by no means uncomplaining gallantry.

Ultimately the wife and the mother-in-law have everything in common—even to jealousy in their love for the same man—but they share nothing so much as a standard of conduct and of feeling that I should want to call aristocratic, and that is one of the loveliest manifestations of romantic imagination I have seen on the screen.

Hungarian movies sometimes look like a demonstration of everything you could possibly learn in film school. Károly Makk's direction of Love is also full of technical resourcefulness - but a resourcefulness fully in the service of the drama - and therefore not assertive of its own virtuosity. It is a deeply proportionate film, and it earns its insights, its feelings, and, finally, its happiness.


Review from Time Out Film Guide

Two women from different worlds whose lives have become rituals around an absent man: Makk catches the nuances of their relationship. One is the man's bedridden mother, who believes her imprisoned son is hitting the big time in America. The other is his wife, carefully sustaining the illusion in the old lady. The film is set in 1953, and shades of the consequences of the cult of the personality hang in Makk's references to the extravagant exploits of the son in the States. Finely shot by János Tóth, the film exhibits a concern for the quality of people's lives that stays this side of the nostalgic, and seems a characteristic of current Hungarian cinema. It may sound grim, it isn't in the least.


Review from MovieMail by Graeme Hobbs

Previously unavailable anywhere, this is a very welcome release of Károly Makk’s Cannes’ jury prize-winning film of 1971 in a beautiful print.

Set during a time of state repression, the love in the film takes place in a core of absence. Janos has been taken and imprisoned; his wife Luca eases his bedridden mother’s last days by making believe that he is in America, heading for golden success with a film he is making. She fabricates the letters telling his news and then listens impassively while his mother reads her the details.

Lovingly filmed in black and white, the film’s concentration on textures and details – of clocks and postcards, photographs and fabrics, often shown as brief flashes of memories, is reminiscent of someone like Svankmajer. When this is added to the conviction with which the women play their relationship out, their teasing dialogue capturing well the mixture of affection and resentment that typifies such situations, then you have a very special film. At one point Luca rubs and then tenderly holds her mother-in-law’s hands. It is a touch that neither prefers, but linked by the absence of Janos, it is what they have. This is love composed of fortitude and forbearance, restraint and fear, nobility in the face of injustice; the belief that you may meet again, the acceptance that you may not.

The last third of the film concentrates on Janos’s life – his dreams, his hopes and his fears. It is a profound section of film. At times it has the delicacy of a pictorial essay; a collaboration between John Berger and Jean Mohr perhaps. Put this on; you’ll be inextricably hooked before the credits have finished.