The alternative Silent Friend gets one looking at plants in different ways! (Film review)

 

The Hong Kong International Film Festival screening of 

Silent Friend that I attended had a post-screening Q&A

with its Hungarian director and Hong Kong star 

 

A more close-up shot of Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Ildikó Enyedi
 

Silent Friend (Germany-Hungary-France, 2025)

- Ildikó Enyedi, director and co-scriptwriter (with Tina Kaiser and Corinne Le Hong)

- Starring: Tony Leung Chiu-wai,  Luna Wedler, Enzo Brumm

- Part of the HKIFF's Galas program 

 

My paternal grandmother was a vegetarian while her husband was not. At a family dinner one day, after she tut-tutted over my grandfather enjoying eating meat, he asked her: "How do you know plants don't have feelings too?  They are living things too, after all!"    

 

For some reason, that conversation stuck with me all these years.  And I got to thinking about it again while viewing Silent Friend, Ildikó Enyedi's mystical-leaning film in which various plants prominently feature and (even) get mentioned in the end credits alongside the cinematic offering's human cast and crew.  This not least because I could imagine this alternative movie's director or at least one of the main human characters in this rather fanciful movie sharing my grandfather's views about flora!

 

Set on a Germany university's leafy campus, Silent Friend tells the story of a trio of individuals who share the same space at various points in time -- not with each other but a giant gingko tree that is lovingly lensed (and turns out to even have some "stunt doubles"!).  Tony Leung Chiu-wai (in his first ever European film appearance) plays his namesake, a Hong Kong neuroscientist who finds himself locked down on a near empty campus in the lockdown days of the Covid pandemic. Unable to work with his usual research subjects (human babies), he decides to conduct his research on brainwaves on a gingko tree -- and, in the process, attracts the attention and suspicion of a stranger (played by Sylvester Groth) who literally as well as metaphorically doesn't speak his language.

 

Although Tony does talk (including via video calls) to other humans (including a fellow scientist essayed by Léa Seydoux) from time to time, he seems on the introverted side.  This also is the case with Hannes (played by Enzo Brumm), a student at the same university in the segment of Silent Friend that is set in 1972.  And while he, too, encounters the gingko tree that Tony conducts experiments on, the plant that Hannes actually spends more time with -- and conducts his own experiments on, with truly startling results! -- is a potted geranium that belongs to his housemate-crush.

 

If truth be told, the section of Silent Friend that was set in 2020 seemed over indulgent at times while Hannes came across as rather weedy and was the least compelling to me of the film's three main human characters.  In contrast, I was consistently absorbed by the section of the movie that was set in 1908 and is centered on the first female student accepted into the university's biology department. 

 

Grete (portrayed by Luna Wedler, whose performance won the Marcello Mastrioanno award for Best Young Actor or Actress at the 2025 Venice Film Festival) impresses in an early scene when she is questioned by a sexist old male professor intent on humiliating her.  But it is after she takes on a job (in return for room and board) with a photographer and learns to use a camera that she truly blooms.  (I wouldn't be surprised if the decision to have this section of Silent Friend be in black and white came out of the photographs she shoots looking more arresting in black and white than colour.)

 

I don't think it'll surprise when I state that the best, downright exhilarating scenes in Silent Friend involve the humans in the presence of plants.  What may be a bit more unexpected though is my thinking that there actually is more than one silent friend in this movie; and that while they are indeed plants in the 2020 and 1972 sections, it seemed to me that in the 1908 section, Grete's silent friend may well have been her camera (which allows her to see and depict plants, and herself too, in new, creative ways)?!

 

My rating for this film: 6. 

On Body and Soul appeals to heart and mind (film review)

The HKIFF screening of my favorite contemporary offering of the fest 

was followed by a Q&A session with its wonderful director-scriptwriter :)

 

On Body and Soul (Hungary, 2017)

- Screening as part of the HKIFF's Galas program

- Ildikó Enyedi, director and scriptwriter

- Starring: Géza Morcsányi, Alexandra Borbély

 

Every year at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, local cinephiles are treated to screenings -- sometimes Asian premieres, like the case with this entry from Hungary -- of a number of films that had their world premieres at the Berlin International Film Festival which took place earlier in the year (as well as at Cannes the year before).  And while it's usually the case that this selection includes the Berlinale's Golden Bear winner, it's not at all uncommon that the work in question would also have garnered three other awards at the same fest.    

 

So expectations were pretty sky high for On Body and Soul, since this offering from director-scriptwriter Ildikó Enyedi had come away from this year's Berlinale with the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, FIPRESCI Prize and the award from the "Reader Jury of the Berliner Morgenpost" as well as the fest's absolutely top award.  And in view of this film hardly being a conventional commercial production, it's actually also pretty amazing to learn that it was a box office hit in its native country too.

 

Upon viewing this quirky but crowdpleasing work though, I now understand why this quirky romantic effort can appeal both to those who like to think about films and also "just" be entertained: for On Body and Soul is the kind of movie with moments that will get its viewers thinking, shocked, laughing and also feeling like they have been touched to the core.  A quietly magical work, it is awe-inspiring in terms of how original is its story, how well made it is, and how its helmer is able to use an audio-visual medium to not only show that still waters run deep but also reveal the passion lurking in the hearts of those whose exteriors seem cold and faces look blank to those who don't know better.

 

Endre (Géza Morcsányi) is the financial director of the abattoir on the outskirts of Budapest where Maria (Alexandra Borbely) has been newly assigned to be the quality control inspector.  At least ten years different in age, they appear to have little in common beyond their both being people who take their work at the slaughterhouse seriously and are more likely to spend time watching TV (him) and playing with LEGO minifigures (her) in their leisure time than socializing with other people.  

 

Amusingly as well as improbably however, it gets revealed that these two solitary individuals both regularly have dreams in which they are deer in a forest with a round pond and a companion of the opposite sex.  Even more unbelievably, they are incredulous to find out, it turns out that they -- who, by the nature of the dreams, are revealed to be more lonely souls than loner types -- have the same dream as the other each night and, in fact, are the other's mate in those dreams!

 

A lesser filmmaker would be able to milk elements of fantasy or farce out of this plot point.  Ildikó Enyedi shows her genius by being able to make those dream sequences beautiful even while amusing post their fantastical nature having been revealed to the audience, and the often awkward interactions between Endre and Maria after their discovery that they share those same dreams sometimes funny but other times bordering on being sad and tragic.

 

Also amazing to me was the revelation during the post-screening Q&A session I attended that On Body and Soul's cast was a mix of professionals and amateurs; with the latter including Géza Morcsányi (whose first film appearance this was, and probably last, and is better known in Hungary as the head of an eminent publishing firm) and the old stag that Endre appeared as in his and Maria's dreams!  For, in all honesty, they produced outstandingly natural performances as this (re)viewer was concerned in a mesmerizing work that is very special in terms of its tale and also the quality of its technical execution.     

 

My rating for the film: 9.0 

A dance show memorable for the walkouts it prompted!

The performing arts show I've seen the most

audience members walk out of! :O

 

Years ago, when I was still living in Philadelphia, I attended a screening of Hungarian auteur's Bela Tarr's The Werckmeister Harmonies.  This 145-minute-long drama most definitely has its fans (including many prominent film critics).  But it also happens to be the film at whose screening I've seen the most walkouts: as in around three quarters of the original audience!

At the risk of sounding like a Philistine, I must admit to not being super impressed or mesmerized by this cinematic work which has many scenes of people walking and walking and walking and walking.  But I did stay until the end of that screening of the film; if nothing else because I found the general audience reaction to this art house offering pretty amusing as well as didn't want to be left wondering if I had missed something particularly incredible if I didn't stay until the very end of the screening!

 

Over the years, I've seen people walking out of other film screenings -- and since moving to Hong Kong, I've also attended performing arts shows that induced audience walkouts (notably a performance of Eileen Chang's Red Rose, White Rose by the National Theatre of China that featured sexier language than some of the more conservative members of the audience found acceptable).  

 

But it wasn't until this evening, at the performance of FOLK - S: Will you still LOVE me tomorrow (that's part of this year's Hong Kong Arts Festival) that I've seen the number of audience walkouts come anywhere close to that of that fateful night in Philadelphia when I went to see The Werkmeister Harmonies and ended up spending quite a bit of time observing my fellow audience members!

 

It's not that the Italian troupe that was performing their dance of choice -- the Schuhplatter, a folk dance popular in the Alpine regions of Bavaria and the Tyrol that began as a courtship display -- all that badly.  And it's not like one couldn't appreciate the effort they put into staging this show conceived of by Alessandro Sciarroni which looks to tax their stamina and leave them incredibly sweaty and some parts of their bodies (including the palms which they used to strike different parts of their body at various points in the dance) disturbingly red.  

 

But it often seemed like this dance event was like a competition between the dancers and the audience to see who would decide first that they had had enough, and walk out of the auditorium! And, in fact, by the time I left myself (about one and half hours after the start of the show), two out of the six dancers had left the stage and so too did the sound guy who had been part of the performance as well as approximately one third of the audience!

 

The performance began promisingly enough with an intriguing dance display that involved the dancers managing to dance in near perfect unison despite five out of the six of them having tape over their eyes (and consequently being unable to see).  Closing my eyes for a few moments, it was actually rather cool to hear (without seeing) people dancing.   Opening my eyes again, I saw that a few minutes later, the tapes on the dancers' eyes were removed and cast to the floor -- and it seemed like the show proper would then begin.   

 

By just around the half hour mark of the show though, the performance was feeling kind of boring -- because the dancers just kept on repeating certain moves over and over and over again -- and prompted the first walkouts of the evening (which included my immediate neighbor to the left, who mumbled that she felt sick as she made her excuses to leave the auditorium!).  Soon after, the buzzy noise that was "playing" as the dancers danced got loud and really annoying -- so much so that I ended up sticking my fingers into my ears to prevent myself from being driven out of the auditorium by it!

 

Around the one hour mark, many members of the audience clearly felt that they had had enough, and the number of walkouts dramatically increased.  At this point, part of me was getting rather pissed off but grimly determined to not "break" before the performers -- who, after all, were the ones doing the sweating and not looking all that happy while the likes of me "just" sat back and watched them!  And there was another part of me that was getting somewhat amused at the evening's actually rather farcical developments!

 

A little after the one and a half hour mark though, a number of people in the audience began tittering during one pause in the dancing, then clapped during another pause in the dancing -- the way I see it: not because they loved what they had witnessed but because they were politely telling the dancers "Enough, please stop!"  When these didn't have the hoped for effect,  I decided to stop wasting my time and join the walkouts.

 

Truly, it was like the audience members were willing the dancers to end the "show" but the remaining dancers weren't going to conclude their performance until every single member of the audience had decided to call it a day first!  So, for all I know, some people could still be there in that auditorium (out of stubborness, a misguided sense of politeness, or whatever); engaged in one of the weirdest "stand-offs" I've been witness to -- even while the first audience members to walk out of the show did so hours ago! :O

1989 (and co-director Erzsébet Rácz) at the 2015 Hong Kong International Film Festival

Installations like these were familiar sights at the venues where

Hong Kong International Film Festival screenings took place

1989 (Denmark-Germany-Hungary, 2014)

- Part of the Documentary Competition programme

- Anders Østergaard and Erzsébet Rácz, dirs.

- Featuring Miklós Németh, Gundula Schafitel, etc.

For many people in this part of the world, the most politically significant event that took place in 1989 was that which took place that summer in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.  For people in other parts of the world, however, it was such as the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, Solidarity's election victory, or the Fall of the Berlin Wall (and the Iron Curtain in general) -- and it's the last, along with events taking place in the then Hungarian People's Republic (which itself ceased to exist on October 23rd of that year) that majorly contributed to it, that is the focus of Danish documentary maker Anders Østergaard and Hungary filmmaker Erzsébet Rácz's 1989.

 

Employing a fascinating mix of filmed interviews, archival footage and "recreated dialogues" (i.e., words that are on the record as having been spoken by the likes of Soviet leader Mikael Gorbachev and East German ruler Erich Honecker being dubbed into footage featuring them so as to seem like they were saying those particular words in those particular scenes), this creative documentary charts how events taking place in Hungary combined to create a situation where the first breaching of the Iron Curtain came to occur in that country.

 

Some of the events and personalities highlighted in the film will be familiar to many, others less so.  With regards to the latter: they include leading Hungarian political lights, such as then prime minister Miklós Németh and his predecessor of several decades before, Imre Nagy -- whose stories turn out to indeed be very interesting and worth knowing -- and Kurt-Werner Schulz, the East German man whose death ended up playing an important role in a fateful decision that Németh would go on to make.

In what could be described as a major coup, Østergaard and Rácz got the cooperation of Miklós Németh -- so that he appeared on camera to recount to the audience his thoughts and reactions to various developments that took place in 1989 as well as in archival footage where he can be seen doing such as taking his oath of office at the age of 40 and at a 1989 Warsaw Pact meeting.  The former Hungary prime minister comes across in the film as an unusual leader -- one who didn't want to be involved in keeping many things secret from the Hungarian people but also actively lying to them -- who wasn't just at the right time and right place but really was the right man to be at the helm and therefore play a pivotal role in making history in 1989.

 

Although the documentary would have been compelling enough even if it focused on the words and actions of the political leaders of the time (and also during the ill-fated Hungarian Revolution of 1956), Østergaard and Rácz opted to also tell the stories of East Germans who sought to cross to the west via Hungary in 1989.  And here again, the filmmakers pulled off a coup -- this time in getting the cooperation of Gundula Schafitel, Kurt-Werner Schulz's widows, and some of his friends to recount to the camera some of the thoughts they had back then and even to reenact scenes from their lives that took place some two and half decades ago.

Considering how well Miklós Németh and a number of his fellow Hungarians are portrayed in the film, it's surprising to hear co-director Erzsébet Rácz -- who took part in a Q&A after the screening -- talk about how 1989 hasn't been particularly well received in her native country.  For my part, I found her eloquent about events that took place in Europe in 1989 but naive with regards to that which took place in the past year in Hong Kong -- and wish that she had done for Hong Kong even one quarter of the research she had done about her country's past before she came over here to speak at the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

My rating for the film: 8.0