O brother, where are thou?

Sunset is French-Hungarian writer-director Laszlo Nemes’s follow-up to his astonishing Oscar-winning debut, Son of Saul. This time round the film is set as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is on the brink of collapse, and it is confounding, but not in a good way, as it’s as turgid as it is baffling. I’ve seen it twice now, and it was as turgid as it was baffling on both occasions. Disappointing, I know, but on the plus side the backdrop is a high-end millinery establishment, so the hats are fab. Truly.

It opens seductively enough, in bustling Budapest in 1913. It opens as if this were a Dickens or Dostoyevsky, but it’s not that type of costume drama, alas, so best get that out your head. Here, we find a beautiful young woman trying on a hat in the millinery establishment Leiter’s. We think she’s a customer initially, as do the staff, but this is Irisz Leiter (Juli Jakab), whose parents owned the shop until it burned down when Irisz was two, taking them with it. This much, at least, is clear. The new owner Brill (Vlad Ivanov) is not happy to see her. What does she want? Reparation? This is what we are asking ourselves, but the question is never answered. She says she’s solely after a job. Brill refuses and then retracts the refusal. Brill is sometimes paternal and kindly and sometimes stern and harsh. Brill says go away and then puts her up at a hotel. At no point does any character own their behaviour in any consistent or recognisably human way. Which is trying, and also makes it impossible to engage. Why connect with these people who may behave one way and then another, with no rhyme nor reason?

Irisz learns that she has a brother.