Peter Strickland's debut film, Katalin Varga, has a very unusual history. Having been shown at the Berlin Film Festival this year, prior to that it had been on the shelf for the best part of two years in need of completion funds to finish the sound in post-production. On top of that, this is a British film which was shot in Romania, in Romanian and Hungarian, and needed local financing to eventually bail out the film. As with many independent films it has received money from the National Lottery-financed UK Film Council to fund its release, however modest it has been.
The story is difficult to explain without spoiling 95% of the plot and it would probably be best to go into the film knowing as little as possible about it as it is actually the latest entry in a very tired, overdone genre: the revenge flick. As such, having this british director merely transport the kind of story it is across cultures and into a different language is at-best stilted and at worst incredibly pretentious. Strickland's filmmaking smacks of a novice, never settling on a visual style that is either consistent or fluid. There are individual moments of striking talent, but it does not string together to create truly satisfactory cohesive storytelling.
Essentially, the film is a performance piece for its star Hilda Péter. Showing her journey into the sticks following a break up with her husband, for the opening third of the film not a tremendous amount happens but once it becomes clear what she's doing the intrigue picks up. The finest scene in the film is when Péter recounts the details of what happened to her to prompt the revenge. On paper it could be quite dull but visually it is handled interestingly and she absolutely knocks the monologue out of the park.
In Berlin this took home an award for the sound, which is rather strange as the annoyingly cacophonous sound design and the poor quality of the recording couple to create one of the film's major weaknesses. It gives the film a genuine Eastern European feel to it (reminiscent of something like Marketa Lazarova) but is both intrusive and overbearing. By the end, through all the jumbled techniques and game turns, some interesting points are obliquely made, and this remains a glimpse of possible great things in the future rather than a tremendously accomplished piece of work at present.