PRICELESS DAY, A

A PRICELESS DAY, Peter Gothar's first film, was the winner of Hungary's top critical awards as best film of 1980. Gothar explores his subject with a blend of humor and insight, launching an audacious attack on human foibles. Lajos Koltai's hand-held camera matches the rakish directing style; the combination produces a film of great vitality. The story concerns an obsessive need to find a place of one's own, a problem viewed in the context of the ongoing post-war housing shortage. Iren (Cecilia Esztergalyos) is a kindergarten teacher in her 30s. She shares a small house with an old woman who is not long for this world. Iren fully expects the house will be hers when the old woman dies, but when death leaves the door, the relatives come crashing in, claiming the house and everything in it. Rolling with the punches, Iren uses her wits (along with various men in her life, including her married lover) to keep a roof over her head. She even marries one man in name only in order to get a government subsidy. One of the best scenes in A PRICELESS DAY features Iren's woman-to-woman talk with Anna (Judit Pogany), the wife of Iren's lover. Quickly becoming friends, the two women ponder the best way to rid themselves of their husbands in order to get places of their own. Gothar's new film “Time Stands Still,” about the 1956 uprising and its effect on a young man's future, will premiere at Cannes this May. “. . .film's sheer impishness acts as tonic here these days. . .refreshingly cynical.” -Variety