previously published on Cineuropa
Hungary has, and has always had, a very high suicide rate. It would be too easy and unhelpful to search for the reason for that statistic in the so-called national mentality, its geography, weather or climate, although the numbers remain much the same regardless of the social and political system of the country currently in place. Part of the reason why preventive measures do not work are those systems themselves, which are not too different from one another.
Filmmaker András Fésős proves he is well aware of that problem in his newest feature In the Face of Gravity. The film already went through national theatrical distribution at the end of last year, but it has just recently started its festival tour. After the Transylvania International FF in Cluj-Napoca, it screened in the European Film Festival Palić’s Parallels and Encounters competition. More festival bookings should ensue.
Our protagonist Sándor Félix (Romanian actor Bogdan Dumitrache, seen in Constantin Popescu’s 2010 Portrait of a Fighter as a Young Man and 2017's Pororoca) is a rescue specialist in Budapest’s central firefighters unit. On top of the physical work, he also serves as negotiator, with the reputation of being 100% able to persuade suicidal people to give up on their plan. He is dedicated to his job to the point that he follows up his “patients” later in their lives, and therefore enjoys the status of local, if not national, hero.
However, things are not so stellar on the home front: his son Kristóf (Olivér Benjámin Börcsök) is one of the people secretly filming his department’s actions and selling the videos to a sensationalist TV station. With the wife and mother out of the picture, possibly because of Félix himself, the rift between them is wide.
These home issues soon spill onto Sándor's career. First, he becomes the victim of an elaborate prank for a popular TV show, then one of his patients, Gábor Beke (László Keszég) proves to be very persistent in his intention to kill himself due to his troublesome marriage with his wife (Andrea Takács). When a woman whose profile does not fit into the boxes of the typical suicidal person manages to surprise him, Félix’s facade crumbles completely…
Threading the fine line between the psychological drama and the genre thriller, Fésős manages to detect and address some of the issues of contemporary Hungarian society (and beyond), such as the rampant lack of compassion and the need for spectacle and sensationalism that lead to estrangement, which can result in suicide attempts. He does so primarily by creating a dense and thick atmosphere with his genre literate albeit sometimes overly expressive directing, which points viewers towards details that reveal their significance later on. There are also some subtle yet polyvalent hints to classics, such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, while the use of trademark Budapest locations, especially one of the iconic bridges, is also brilliantly executed in Péter Szatmári's and Tamás Dobos's cinematography. The neoclassical score by Gábor Keresztes successfully creates the illusion that the film is more grandiose than its budget would suggest.
The problems with In the Face of Gravity arise in the acting department. With a lead actor who nails the facial expressions but does not speak the language and thus has to be dubbed, and the rest of the cast coming mainly from the stage and being too histrionic, line deliveries become a little declamatory, influencing the general tone of the film. However, Fésős adapts to the situation, turning something that should look realistic into a subjective vision of the protagonist’s crumbling psyche, resulting in a solid, rewarding film.