Free Fall

György Pálfi once again gives audiences a lesson in surrealist imagination. Though short, Free Fall is bursting with ideas as it portrays a tormented pensioner who decides to end her life alongside a taciturn newspaper reader from a supermarket. Instead of taking her shopping cart to the store, she drags it up onto her roof in order to jump off in it. As it turns out, this Hungarian master of the grotesque is merciless: not only does she survive, but she also drops in on her neighbors. Hiding behind the doors of the apartments that she passes on her way to her little domestic hell are other life stories from this Budapest apartment building. Just like in the memorable Taxidermia,Pálfi proves that he can walk a stylistic tightrope, adeptly juggling various genres with the conventions of satirical science fiction along with a psychological family drama involving three people and a cow. All seven episodes – one for each floor that the immortal pensioner has to climb up – combine absurd humor, social criticism, and the music of Amon Tobin.

Mariusz Mikliński