Improperly Dressed

An oddly elliptical, mournfully elegiac tale of a young Communist, hounded for political reasons, who seeks haven in a remote sanatorium where, disguised as a woman among women, he becomes increasingly seized by the inertia of his time out of war. The year is 1919, the oppressors are White Russians, and the sanatorium stands nicely as a symbol for what is wrong with Hungary, then as now. The trouble is that Sándor seems uncertain what to make of the parable, and the bizarre situation, left pretty much to its own devices, simply fritters itself away in a haze of half-hinted sexual ambiguities and dreamy atmospherics (the camerawork is exquisite).