Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

christopher-underwood Having already seen and very much enjoyed this director's Berberian Sound Studio and prior to seeing his latest, The Duke Of Burgundy, decided to check out this, his first feature. Glad I did, seems it didn't get a theatrical release in UK, which is a travesty. Great little film, very focused, very intense, with a stunning central performance from Hilda Peter. Problems in her village prompt her to take off with her son and traverse the Carpathians and maybe exorcise her devils. Always very good to look at, this also has what has become a Strickland trademark, amazing score. The tinkling cowbells, echoing across the fields or the creak of the horse and cart carrying them both find their way unobtrusively into the score. Always engrossing, the central sequence where the main character explains graphically what happened to her as their boat slowly spins on a lake is spellbinding and so very effective. Excellent.

Mike Roman Great, atmospheric effort from Strickland. I can only imagine he had some affinity with this part of Romania whether from childhood or other. The soundtrack and some of the slow lingering shots (esp. the scene looking at child, mother and horse not moving from behind, and the forest shot) were very affecting, and reminded me of Tarkovsky (not in a bad way ;)I got to thinking of the inextricable nature of all things, of how everything (as a single glorious 'entity') was so deviously and religiously bound up that to even attempt to extract something from it was tantamount to destructuring the whole (and thus destroying its royalty). That a film can inspire me (it has to be said not single-handedly)to such ends is indicative of a deep metaphysical quality within it.There is a particular sentence that the man utters towards the end of the film that resonates deeply towards this metaphysis. I shan't explicate it, nor even repeat it, but you shall know it when you hear it.Thanks for this Strickland, and all who were involved in and outside it (even the guy who carted the extra film stock when, presumably, you ran out ;) 'Ultimately, there are no parts at all.' Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life.

paul2001sw-1 The beautiful Transylvanian countryside, where a thin veil of modernity covers a continuing peasant lifestyle for many, is the setting for Peter Strickland's short, unsentimental film 'Katalin Varga' about the aftermath of a rape. It's a quiet movie, strikingly shot, that offers no pretence of life easier than it actually is. To me, it seemed that the reaction of the perpetrator's wife seemed simultaneously slightly overdone (in terms of motivation) and underplayed; one might also suggest that the ending is not especially satisfying, probably because the film never lets us know exactly what it is that Katalin is hoping for. This can be justified, however, because it's completely plausible that the character doesn't know herself. In a nutshell, this is a revenge movie; but so much more interesting that most of what we see in this genre.

Gecq Oh well, we have a directing debut here and quite an impressive one at that. Good camera, beautiful images and musical score, this narration is set in Hungarian-Romanian Transylvania.Spoiler: Our female Protagonist, impressively played by Hilda Péter, had been raped by two men in the past. When the truth about this incident which she had been hiding and which resulted in the birth of her only child, a son, comes to light ten years after, she is cast out by her husband and decides to take revenge on the men who raped her. She takes her wagon and her son and sets out on a journey of tracking down the men, planning on confronting and killing them. This narration clearly is based on Mihail Sadoveanu's famous novel "Baltagul" (The Hatchet) which is transforming the traditional Romanian theme of the ballad "Mioriţa" into a modern detective story and blending the traditional role of a Romanian woman into Modernism. Our protagonist starts on a similar journey but the ends which we are facing are showing cruelly how Sadoveanu's story could have ended more realistically.