Diary for My Loves

Mészáros' second semi-autobiographical film diary picks up where Diary for My Children left off in the Hungary of 1953. Alter-ego Juli, still played by the frosty but winningly resolute Czinkóczi, is now 18, has lost her lover in the Stalinist purges, and is placed in the care of her party-puppet foster mother. Juli's dream of becoming a film director comes true in Moscow, but her adherence to documentary truths troubles the comrades back in Budapest, even after the death of Bad Father Joe. Taking us up to the '56 Uprising, Mészáros creates a superbly confident portrait of her country's traumatic past, painted through individual passions and more than a touch of psychoanalysis. Sometimes her points may miss their mark without a crash course in East European history, official and more especially unofficial; but her integrity binds the mixture of psychodrama and newsreel, monochrome and colour, novelette and history lesson.