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World Fantastic Red

The Butcher, the Whore and the One-Eyed Man

János SZÁSZ

Hungary2017 105min Asian Premiere

Synopsis

Set in the city of Budapest in 1925, János Szász follows the slow decline of three individuals as they are sucked into a world of sinful living; more specifically, the tale of a wild and voracious love triangle.

Program Note

Based on a true story in Budapest, Hungary in 1925. The whore Mária and the one-eyed man Gusztáv rescued each other by chance when trying to suicide at the same time and place. Both fled to the countryside and lived a new life together. It is a world dominated by the slaughterer Kudelka. He is a greedy man who controls everything there and eventually covets Gusztáv’s wife Mária. Almost everything there is compared to meat. Kudelka mocks Mária as ‘fresh meat’, and Gusztáv calls Kudelka ‘oily bacon’. This is not just a common analogy. The power struggle between the three is a battle to decide ‘who is meat’. The old-fashioned slaughterhouse is an appropriate stage that doubles the tensions between the three. It is evident in the latter half that the slaughterhouse is not just a background, but a confident protagonist. The naked depiction of the slaughter in the film may be an essential option for expressing the terrible exodus of what is pushed away in the past. (KIM So-hee)

Diretor

János SZÁSZ

Born in 1958, Budapest, János Szász graduated from the University of Theater and Film Art Budapest as a script-editor and a director. He won Best Director’s Weekly Picture Award at the 2008 Fantasporto for Opium: Diary of Madwoman (2007) and Grand Prix at the 2013 Karlovy Vary Film Festival for The Notebook (2013).