HUN 1977 | Director: Márta Mészáros | Script: Ildikó Kóródy, József Balázs, Géza Bereményi, Márta Mészáros | Camera: János Kende | Editor: Éva Kármentő | Music: György Kovács | Cast: Marina Vlady, Lili Monori, Jan Nowicki, Zsuzsa Czinkóczi, Wladimir Wyssozki | Production: Dialog Filmstúdió | Colour | 35mm | 100 min | hungarian OV with english SUB | National Film Institute Hungary / Swedish Film Institute

[I]n THE TWO OF THEM (1977), Mária (Marina Vlady), a seemingly happily married middle-aged woman, who runs a centre for maladjusted young mothers, befriends the young, rebellious Juli (Lili Monori). Where Mária is steady and calm, Juli is impulsive and not a bit arrogant, attributes which make it easy to dismiss her.

Juli is married to a bright but hopelessly implosive alcoholic, Bodnár (Jan Nowicki). Yet at no point does Mészáros present her as a victim. Thanks to Juli, Mária begins to see the cracks in her own marriage and worldview, and their friendship, their transindividuality within the greater context of the women’s home, allows them to move forward.

THE TWO OF THEM is then very much a film about a clash, of generations, values and attitudes, as seen from women’s point of view. The most suggestive is the scene between Juli and Mária’s conservative, emotionally distanced husband, in which Juli’s bluntness and her firm belief that Mária’s need for self-determination has lain dormant meet with smug hostility.

Is it because Juli defies the status quo, but hasn’t articulated how to build on this knowledge? […] In Mészáros’s case, I think we can say that her fictions help us see the injustices in the imbalance of power, and acknowledge that historical truth lies on young Julia’s side. (Ela Bittencourt, Sight and Sound, 2019)