The Prefab People

A young couple living in a housing-estate flat in Budapest. The husband walks out, and the film then winds back to show how they got here: money, shifts, children, dishes, and the same arguments circling in the same two rooms. It is not interested in a big crisis. It is interested in how small the things that end a marriage are. None of the quarrels is destructive on its own; what destroys is the same quarrel repeating without change. The form is early Béla Tarr at his closest to documentary: handheld camera, tight spaces, long conversations, shots that will not leave a face. The heavy rhythm and long framing he would later be known for are not here yet; this is realist social drama. The title rests on an architectural fact: prefabricated blocks were standard housing in Hungary at the time, and the characters' lives have been fitted to that standard's dimensions. Judit Pogány and Róbert Koltai star. Who it is for: viewers interested in social realism and in where Tarr began. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the Tarr of Sátántangó. This film is short, talkative and almost as warm as television drama.