“We are fools in love,” Jane Austen famously wrote in her novel Pride and Prejudice. This statement can easily be confirmed by whoever has had the joy and despair of being in love, an uncertain condition that can generate the most unexpected and ecstatic emotions. For Vizy Márta (Natasa Stork), being in love, or rather, being hopeful about someone, means taking the crazy and illogical decision of leaving behind a respected medical career in New Jersey and coming back to Budapest, Hungary after 20 years. All on the basis of an illusion, a hunch, a possibility. Still, she is convinced.
In Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (glorious title to convey the uncertainty and excitement of a newfound love), Márta agrees with Drexler János (Viktor Bodó), a doctor who she met during a conference in the U.S., to meet in the Liberty Bridge of Budapest in one month’s time. She appears, but he doesn’t. After finding him in the local hospital and confronting him, he swears that he has never seen her before.
Soon, and going against all sense of sanity, she finds an apartment close to the bridge, a new job at János’s hospital and discreet, but significant ways to become part of his life. All while trying to figure out if she had real reasons to be enthusiastic about this possibility. Or if she imagined all of it because of a personality disorder (how other way could she explain this impulsive decision to rock her life for a man who doesn’t seem to remember her?).
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While the setup of the film could be the start of a romantic and idealised story (meeting someone abroad and reuniting without exchanging phone numbers or contact information, only based on a promise, is the stuff of silly dreams), it turns out to be a muddled and twisted story about love, both the unrequited and the one that gradually grows. The kind of love that can be found in real life, with little glorification, idealisation, or romanticism to render it unreal. There is romance, stimulus and passion, but they are conditioned by despair, uncertainty, and fear. Preparations is marked by the careful feeling of longing and the painstaking art of falling in love slowly, even if the heart is ready to fall in a matter of seconds.
Lili Horvát, director of the film, covers the story in an everyday mantle. There is nothing extraordinary or overly special about the people at the centre of it. Márta is surely a gifted neurosurgeon, but she is lonely, with a cold exterior that isolates her from everyone, especially her new peers. In addition, she spends much of her time obsessing over this extremely normal man.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t matter. For her there is no one as fascinating, captivating and intoxicating as Drexler. She even watches videos she finds on YouTube of him as a child, reads his newly released book in one sitting, and masturbates after finishing it. Still, her exterior is as stoic, mysterious, and impenetrable as could be. Natasa Stork uses her cold blue eyes and neutral features to apply a poker face so convincing that even Drexler doubts Márta’s interest and (secret) devotion.
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While the story itself is romantic, the tone and the atmosphere are anything but. Horvát uses silence and simplicity to make it restless, threatening, and hard to anticipate (a true miracle in this day and age). Many of Márta’s actions are recognisable (how many of us have “stalked” their crushes in social media?), but the director/writer presents them in a way that creates tension, even fear, while playing with the possibility that Márta is indeed dealing with a personality disorder, or at least a worrisome case of obsession. This, at the same time, offers an interesting, but muted commentary about the plot itself, for it is certain that if the roles were reversed, this would be a horror film instead of a romance.
The ambiguous tone of the film slowly evolves into a recognisable love story (from real life, not the movies). The score by Gábor Keresztes, equally mysterious as elegant, conveys much of the changes in the mood and the evolution of the relationship at the centre of the movie. When characters don’t talk and only exchange glances, Keresztes’s score and Róbert Maly’s camera give clues on their real intentions and feelings. Every technical aspect becomes vital to understand the message, the mood and, most importantly, the undefinable ending. The latter’s interpretation will depend on the viewer’s expectations and assumptions in the topics of love and human relations.
With Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, Horvát offers a complicated and messy story about certainty and doubt, love and fear, and devotion and expectation. Even when the mood and the atmosphere are chilling, it turns out to be a deeply romantic film, cemented on the contrasting emotions of falling in love.