Final Cut - Hölgyeim és uraim: already a cult film

by Fabien Lemercier

08/03/2012 - Featuring Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Penélope Cruz, Marcello Mastroianni, Audrey Tautou, Julia Roberts, Tony Leung, Woody Allen, Daniel Craig, Sharon Stone, Gary Oldman, Gérard Depardieu, Bruno Ganz, and Monica Bellucci, but also Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marcello Mastroianni, Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Clark Gable, Sophia Loren, Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jeanne Moreau, Sean Connery, Brigitte Bardot and even Kim Novak, Final Cut - Hölgyeim és uraim by György Pálfi has been much talked about since its premiere at the beginning of February at the Hungarian Film Week.

For his fourth feature film after Hukkle (European discovery of the year at the European Film Awards and a Special Mention for the Best Young Director in San Sebastian in 2002), Taxidermia [trailer] (selected at Cannes' Certain Regard in 2006) and I Am Not Your Friend (in competition at Karlovy Vary in 2009), the talented and unpredictable Hungarian filmmaker, confronted with the Hungarian film industry's recent serious financial crisis, decided to tell a love story using (without permission) images from 450 emblematic films from world cinema, from Metropolis to Indiana Jones, via The Godfather, Avatar, Scenes from a Marriage, Psycho or even Modern Times, with a few television series thrown in aswell.

Although he is fully aware that this film in honour of the seventh art and cinematographic language, for which he wrote the screenplay with Zsófia Ruttkay, will never be able to be exploited commercially because he lacks the rights to do so, the director however hopes that it will be screened at a renowned international film festival.

(Translated from French)