Whatever happened to butterflies in the stomach, fluttering eyelids and quivering lips? Truth be told, you'd be hard-pressed to find old-school romance in any of György Pálfi's films, but his latest offering goes above and beyond in terms of his unwavering commitment to innovation.
Throwing nine attractive bodies together for the space of twenty long days, Pálfi let them ad lib with abandon for the sake of art. What he got in return was impermanency, instability and bland emotional immaturity. In other words, what he got was reality. I Am Not Your Friend snakes around Sára (Kamilla Fátyol), who is pregnant by and in love with Márk (Zsolt Páll). But Márk loves Sophie (Kata Farkas), a girl who despises being cheated upon. All Sophie wants is someone to spoil her silly, which would have normally suited András (Csaba Gosztonyi) just fine, if he wasn't already busy spoiling his wife, Rita (Gyöngyvér Országh), who is in turn nurturing the friendly Natasha (Kim Corbisier). Bypass Jimmy (Csaba Czene) and you'll get to Petra (Eszter Tóth), who loves Etele (István Szülek), who runs full circle by hankering after Sára, the first in line for love. Nobody gets it, of course, or anything else they want, and no one wants what they ultimately get.
Though this provocative little package could easily have stumbled into emotional chaos, it is held together by a single concept: the determination to sustain individuality. Every choice made, every kiss exchanged is a statement of absolute liberty. Faced with an ever-evolving pattern of relationships, Pálfi allows his usually stylized visuals to dissolve in favour of an impulsive carnality that deserves to be depicted as it really is: raw, driving and not nearly picture-perfect. I Am Not Your Friend gives us a cynical mosaic of emotional alienation made in the freedom of total improvisation. The result is a truly boundary-pushing feature from this already iconic filmmaker.
Dimitri Eipides
György Pálfi was born in Budapest, where he later studied filmmaking at the University of Theatre, Film and Television. He has directed the short films Break and Check II (94), The Fish (97), Knock, Knock – Seventh Room: Devil's Lock (98), Round and Round (98) and Shaman vs. Icarus, which was part of the omnibus film A Bus Came… (03). His feature films to date are Hukkle (02), Taxidermia (06) and I Am Not Your Friend (09), all of which screened at the Festival.