Halfway Home
Átjáróház
Hungary - 2022
Writing: Attila Veres
Cinematography: Gábor Garai
Music: Atti Pacsay
Produced by: András Muhi, Gábor Ferenczy
Cast: Máté Borsi-Balogh, Péter Bárnai, Teréz Csombor, Márta Lídia Danis…
International sales: National Film Institute Hungary
Legally restricted to persons over 12
Lenght : 104 min // Ratio : 2.39 // Format : dcpLanguage : Hungarian // Subtitles : English and french
Krisztián, an indolent young loser, gets a job in a morgue. An incongruous task awaits him: help the souls in transit to settle their affairs on Earth before the big departure. No sooner has he done so than his almost-girlfriend, Ági, joins the ranks of the deceased.
Boy meets girl, boy is stood up, girl dies and retains a deep sense of animosity towards her afterlife suitor, boy tries to make it up to her as best he can. In his previous feature, Loop (2016), Isti Madarász trapped his main character in a time loop, where this anti-hero seed saw the opportunity to save his companion from a brutal end. This time, the theme of a second chance is used to irrigate a fantastic comedy that is luminous despite the omnipresence of death, and joyful beyond the background of social misery that appears in dotted lines. Halfway Home simply borrows its decorum from Bondie tales, invents cinematically enjoyable rules and obstacles, and composes an afterlife as offbeat as its approach to the romcom.