Taxidermia

Three generations, three bodies. The grandfather is an orderly at a barracks during the war: permanently hungry, permanently humiliated, taking refuge in his fantasies. His son is a competitive speed eater of the socialist era, his stomach turned into a matter of state pride. The grandson is thin, silent, and works as a taxidermist. For all three, the reckoning is with the body. The subject is not family but how the body gets used from one regime to the next. The first part is starvation, the second forced filling, the third emptying the body out entirely and preserving it. Hungary's twentieth century is narrated through three stomachs. The form is extreme: the colour changes from part to part and the effects are practical and hard to take. The eating competition sequences are the most discussed passages and are deliberately unbearable. György Pálfi directs, from stories by Lajos Parti Nagy. It screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2006 and was submitted as Hungary's Oscar entry that year. At the festivals where it played, it became known for walkouts. Csaba Czene, Gergely Trócsányi and Marc Bischoff play the three generations. Who it is for: viewers who like extreme formal experiment and grotesque cinema. Who it is not for: anyone with a weak stomach; the film is genuinely harsh and does it as a choice.