The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“A captivating critique of generational discord and class distinctions … Exquisitely shot by Lajos Koltai (Adoption).”

Film at Lincoln Center

Marta Mészáros explores class, gender, and generational conflict in Riddance, which stars Erzsébet Kútvölgyi as Jutka, a young factory worker who pretends to be a university student. The ruse retains the romantic interest of András (Gábor Nagy, who would go on to co-star with Kútvölgyi in Mészáros’s Diary for My Lovers and Diary for My Father and Mother), a handsome young man from an upper-middle-class family, but when Jutka reveals her true background their relationship becomes increasingly strained. In representing Hungarian society’s clashing attitudes and prejudices, Mészáros depicts a working-class woman’s attempt to overcome the perceived inferiority of her social status as well as her own familial dysfunction and feelings of inadequacy. Following the director’s portrait of youthful idealism in Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls!, Riddance shows with somber compassion the complex societal and cultural barriers that separate the most hopeful of young lovers.