The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“A film about a clash, of generations, values, and attitudes, as seen from women’s point of view … Mészáros’s fictions help us see the injustices in the imbalance of power.”

Ela Bittencourt, Sight and Sound

Two women, each at a critical crossroads in life and love, find refuge in their friendship with one another in Márta Mészáros’s multilayered look at female solidarity. Mari (Marina Vlady), a middle-aged director of a hostel for working women, grapples with her insecurities about aging and her husband’s impending departure to Mongolia; Juli (Lili Monori), an unruly young factory employee raising a daughter (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi, future star of Mészáros’s Diary trilogy), struggles to escape from her tumultuous relationship with her alcoholic husband (Jan Nowicki). With characteristic sensitivity, Mészáros traces the protective yet complex bond that forms between the two, each at a different stage of life but dealing with the same questions of freedom and autonomy as they chart their rocky paths towards independence.