A nameless protagonist (non-professional actor Lajos Orsos) lives an anonymous life in a small, spartanly furnished flat in a nameless town. When he was younger, he was one of over 70,000 children that grew up under government care. His parents, shown in blurry flashbacks, were Roma who indulged in drinking binges, criminal activities and domestic violence. The protagonist sometimes has contact with his former youth counsellor, who one day gives him his government files, though, so the kind man explains, this is against the rules. Through the papers, the young man hopes to be able to make more sense of the murky memories of his childhood and find out who he really is.

Bogdán is not really interested in a clear narrative arc but prefers an evocation of the troubled state of mind of a young adult who wants to understand who he is himself before he can try to understand the world. The director uses striking imagery that includes a colour palette of blue-white and blue-black contrasts, extreme close-ups, shifting focus and a variable depth of field. Several scenes are impeccably composed and confirm the axiom that a picture can say more than a thousand words: an overhead shot of the protagonist curled up in the bathtub foetus-style, fully immersed in the water, or the face of the protagonist protruding from the dark behind a birthday cake, watching the young girl to his right blowing out her candles are so telling they need little explanation. The appropriately languid and somewhat loungy score by Membran helps establish the film’s introspective tone from the get-go.

Audiences looking for any clear-cut answers or pages of explanatory dialogue will be frustrated (and the film could have used a tad more scripting) but arthouse and festival audiences able to tune into Bogdán’s audiovisual poem will relish the opportunity for a film experience unlike any other. Boldog új élet (Happy New Life) has revealed another promising talent of Hungarian cinema.

This film was screened as part of the 2007 Magyar Filmszemle (2007 Hungarian Film Week).