Deborah Ross

Spellbinding: Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time reviewed

Ignore the unsnappy title – this gripping, simmering, sometimes mysterious Hungarian noir is hypnotic

Spellbinding: Natasa Stork as Marta in Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time

The premise for the unsnappily titled Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is this: a Hungarian neurosurgeon meets a fellow Hungarian neurosurgeon at a medical conference, falls in love, and gives up her shiny life and career in America to be with him in Budapest. They had agreed to meet on one of the city’s bridges. He doesn’t show. She tracks him to the hospital where he works. He says he’s never met her before. And now we are on board. Now we have to know: is he gaslighting her? Is she crazy? How is this going to play out? This is one of those films that has you in the palm of its hand right from the off.

The film is written and directed by Lili Horvat and while a Hollywood treatment might have had this spiralling into the obsessional ungodliness of a Play Misty For Me or Misery or Fatal Attraction that isn’t what we have here. Instead, Preparations is a gripping, simmering, sometimes mysterious, noir-ish take on what the brain cannot know about itself. If it were a book, it would be literary fiction rather than a thriller. Nothing against thrillers, but we don’t always want someone spying something from a train.

This is one of those films that has you in the palm of its hand right from the off

The main character is Marta, played by Natasa Stork with an enigmatic minimalism, an almost-stillness, and an unwavering gaze. She is unnervingly effective. Her love object is Janos (Viktor Bodo). After he stands her up, she confronts him in a hospital car park and when he says he hasn’t any idea who she is she collapses. It’s the shock of it. Similarly, perhaps, Piers Morgan collapsed when he realised Meghan was never going to return his texts.

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