EIFF Review: Katalin Varga
Times were always hard for the British Arthouse film-maker and never more so than right now. British directors, those wishing to pursue more enlightened ideals than cockney gangster geezer pastiches or clapped out movie vehicles for overexposed TV stars, are increasingly looking abroad for funding.
Here we find director Peter Strickland, having made a string of acclaimed shorts in the 1990s, shooting his first feature on an ultra-low budget in Transylvania using Hungarian actors speaking their own language, Strickland himself having almost no command of Hungarian.
High risk potential, then, but it pays off handsomely. Katalin Varga plays like the spirit of Andrei Tarkovsky let loose on a Korean revenge tragedy. We follow the eponymous avenger of the title as she goes in pursuit of the man who raped her. Accompanied by her ten-year old son, they travel across a desolately beautiful rural landscape which seems almost to be seethingly alive around the characters.
Indeed, the living countryside in the film is like a character itself. In one charged scene, Varga recounts her experience of the rape and describes how in the aftermath the animals of the forest came and covered her. It is as if she is some mythical spirit of the dark woods, born into Varga’s form.
Painterly visuals are heightened further by a truly outstanding soundtrack, incorporating pieces by Nurse With Wound’s Steven Stapleton mixed with shades of dark ambient and environmental music, enhancing an impression of rushing, ever rushing over dark surfaces with no good end in sight. This is a masterly debut feature from Strickland, who really deserves homegrown funding, should he ever actually desire it.
Sat 27 June 20:25 Filmhouse 1