OVP: On Body and Soul (2017)

Film: On Body and Soul (2017)

Stars: Alexandra Borbely, Geza Morcsanyi, Reka Tenki, Ervin Nagy

Director: Ildiko Enyedi

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Foreign Language Film-Hungary)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We create meaning from small things in life.  The shirt I'm wearing (one of maybe thirty shirts I own & have tucked into a drawer) has memories associated with it, thoughts I had or places I went in it.  The same with the books stacked with some degree of order behind me, even if they're slightly askew and in some cases covered in dust.  Things dominate On Body and Soul, as two people at the center of it search for meaning in their lives-tappings pens and little dolls and shards of glass.  On Body and Soul is a difficult film, and not one that I find a great deal of success in, but it is a film that has vision, something that has to be commended even if I don't always subscribe to what it's trying to achieve.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Endre (Morcsanyi), an executive at a slaughterhouse, and a new hire to his company named Maria (Borbely), an autistic woman who is not well-liked mostly because she takes things so literally in a company that values casualness amongst its employees.  After some valuable mating powder is stolen, Endre hires a psychologist (Tenki) to investigate the employees to try & deduce who the person who stole the powder is.  In doing so, Endre & Maria discover that they somehow had the same exact dream the night before.  This becomes a pattern, as they test each other but realize they dream the same things every night.  Both are curious about this, but Endre also sees this as a potential opening for a romantic relationship, which Maria rejects as she does not enjoy being touched.  During the final twenty minutes of the movie, Maria (who decides she wants to be with Endre even if it is difficult), teaches herself to touch.  When, before he realizes the work she's done, Endre says that they should end any hope of romance, Maria attempts suicide...before Endre rushes in (unknowingly) to tell her that he loves her.  This results in them making love, and the next morning, the synchronized dreaming has ended.

I am not a big fan of movies where major plot points feel like a red herring.  That's kind of the case for On Body and Soul.  I get the symbolism (particularly the mating powder and how it can make two cows suddenly horny for each other), but it doesn't work for me when we don't get a lot of explanation for the cosmic reasoning these two people have mirrored dreams, and for me it felt like this was something that was more of a story crutch than a twee "in" for the couple to forge a stronger bond.  This took me out of the movie, especially as it felt like this aspect of the story was only interesting when the screenwriters needed it to get to the next plot point.

That being said, there's something about On Body and Soul that I see in a way I didn't expect.  I already talked about the production design being really character-driven, but I also enjoyed the way that the characters sort of move around.  Endre, for example, is a pretty together guy for most of the movie.  We are meant to understand that he's lonely, and we do see moments of casual sexism from him (that we're supposed to take as "par for the course" in this workplace but that doesn't make them acceptable), as he regularly checks out his female coworkers.   But when we think of loneliness in the movies, we think of people who have something missing from their lives that they're constantly opining-this isn't the case for Endre, who only late in the film acknowledges that he had shut himself off to romance because it wasn't an option for him as he got older...and that he seemed genuinely okay with that until Maria came in.  I liked this because it's more reflective of the reality of being single & getting older-you don't always think about something "missing" from your life.

I also want to call out Reka Tenki who gives the best performance in the movie, to the point where I kind of wanted the film to be all about her.  As a therapist who toes the line between appropriate behavior & professionalism (there's a scene where she asks Endre about his sexual history that seems shocking & like she's punishing him for blatantly ogling her breasts), and is genuinely interesting.  The way that she seems only mildly interested in her job, and then in a later scene shows a curiosity about the mirrored dreams (as if she, too, has suddenly been opened up to the possible) is really well-done, and shows the potential of a movie that knew a way to incorporate its grown-up look at unlikely love between isolated people and a fantastical plot that never laces with what's happening to the main characters.