Gloomy Sunday

Budapest in the 1940s is the setting for this ethereal, romantic retro-melodrama from director Rolf Schübel. The personal relationship between a posh popular restaurant’s Jewish owner, Hans (Joachim Krol), and gorgeous manager, Ilona (Erika Marozsán), branches into a love triangle when a handsome songwriter (Stefano Dionisi) is hired as house pianist. Their lives change radically when one of the pianist’s compositions is linked to a spate of suicides, and a previous customer enthralled by his hostess’ beauty and elegance returns to Budapest as a Nazi SS officer involved in conducting the Hungarian arm of Hitler’s Final Solution. What begins as a melancholy tale of people adrift in a pond of conflicting feelings and ambitions grows into a resonant, philosophical coupling of passion and intrigue.