Eastern Sugar

The Hungarians Guli, Timi and Virag are at that familiarly painful age when one deals with existential questions like what one wants out of life and who one actually is. Their small town is not exactly exciting, their work situation leaves much to be desired and their love life is more a spicy dream than reality. The three friends are looking for something more and they hope to find it elsewhere, ultimately choosing for a summer job at Balaton Lake. Paradise is not to be found there either, even though they manage to get jobs in a restaurant. As seasonal workers, they are put up in a shabby hostel and are not even allowed to spend their free nights in the restaurant, as the employees are not welcome there. Serving fancy upper-class customers is not any fun either, except for Virag, who discovers his own way to enjoy himself. Two of the friends decide to find their fortune in Budapest, and the virile Virag goes to an audition to become a porn actor. Ferenc Török’s second feature is a generation film from one of the up-and-coming directors that Hungary is turning out nowadays. It was also very popular with the domestic audience. A young film about young people looking for ways to express themselves. The connections with his generation become even more evident when Török’s colleague director Kornél Mundruczó (Pleasant Days) appears in a humorous cameo as the porn cameraman. (LC)