The New Yorker
What sets this film apart is its fusing of the impassioned and the grimly palpable.
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Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
A neurosurgeon leaves her successful life for the man she loves, only for him to claim they've never met, in this award-winning psychological noir from Hungary.
Márta, a 40-year-old neurosurgeon, falls in love. She leaves her shining American career behind and returns to Budapest to start a new life with the man she loves. But she waits for him at the Liberty Bridge in vain - he does not appear at their rendezvous. Márta starts to search for him desperately, but when she finally finds him, the love of her life claims that they have never met before.
Less2020Rating: M95 minsHungary
Drama
- Director:
- Lili Horvát
- Writer:
- Lili Horvát
- Cast:
- Natasa StorkViktor BodóBenett VilmányiAndor LukátsZsolt Nagy
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time | Reviews
88%59 reviewsRotten Tomatoes® Score
All reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
Slant Magazine
Lili Horvát's film delights in wallowing in ambiguity, contradiction, and doubt.
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The New York Times
"Preparations" manifests its protagonist's uncertainty through fluttering reflections and slinky shadows, and images that conceal and obscure the full picture.
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Wall Street Journal
The reveal isn't equal to the buildup. Yet you've still had the experience of being taken in -- much more in a good way than a bad one -- by a gifted filmmaker wielding cinema's seductive power.
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RogerEbert.com
A beautiful and acute rendering of what could be if some of the most implausible lies we tell ourselves were in fact true.
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A.V. Club
Sadly, the reveal here is quite banal, which retroactively makes the film as a whole play like a prolonged, unsatisfying tease.
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Boston Globe
A lovely visit to a Budapest that yields its secrets more willingly than the sad, repressed woman at the story's center.
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The Guardian
Here is a puzzle or a riddle of a psychological movie, with distant echoes of Roeg's Bad Timing or Antonioni's Blow-Up.
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Little White Lies
Echoing its clashing tones of red and blue, this is an unexpectedly warm film with a chilling premise.
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Daily Telegraph
Horvát explores how romantic fantasy can be a projection based on slender evidence, but it isn't no evidence at all.
Full reviewPreparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time | Release Details
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is available to stream in New Zealand now on Google Play and Apple TV.