Nimród Antal
Kontroll

An honest and clean debut work by a young Hungarian director, Nimród Antal, who successfully demonstrates his complete competence in using the camera, coming from the world of music videos and commercials, but also thanks to previous acting experiences. The film arrived in Italian theaters only in 2005, two years after its completion, after winning the "Prix de la Jeunesse" at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004.

An original intro with a real declaration of intent and purposes introduces the bizarre and mysterious story. A particularly claustrophobic setting: the Budapest metro stations, which, due to their peculiar depth (connecting Buda and Pest via the Danube), are well suited to express the adrenaline-filled, stressful, and squalid life of a group of ticket inspectors. The plot revolves around the enigmatic protagonist Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi), a reckless and resolute young man in his twenties who abandons a stable future and a promising career to take up the job of a ticket inspector and seek refuge in the metro environment, which he never leaves, and a mysterious hooded individual who is committing a series of murders. The company's executives suspect that Bulcsú is responsible, thus leaving him with no choice but to try to uncover the grim mystery hidden among the dark and foul-smelling tunnels. One day, during the usual patrol ("ticket or pass?"), he encounters the quirky Szofi (Eszter Balla), with whom he falls in love at first sight and through whom he manages to "escape" his private hell.

A gem of Hungarian cinema, enriched by the beautiful cinematography of Gyula Pados, it has now become a true cult movie for the new Hungarian generation. Unclassifiable in its uniqueness.

Kontroll is not a thriller, as the first and fantastic scene of the blonde drunk woman in red high heels on the long and alienating escalator might lead us to think. Nor does it fall into the genre of night gang fights, although it recalls in some moments Walter Hill's "The Warriors" (1979), especially concerning certain traits of the soundtrack.

Perhaps a bit slow in some sequences and less harmonious in others, but full of interesting insights and masterfully reconstructed. Worth mentioning is the hilarious sequence of group therapy sessions with the psychologist for the entire team of ticket inspectors and especially the dreamlike walk of the two protagonists by candlelight among cables and tracks, a tribute to the rabbit hole in Carroll's "Wonderland."