Luca regularly visits her bedridden mother-in-law. Luca’s husband, János, has been arrested on a trumped up political charge, and Luca does not know if he is still alive. Luca hides this from his mother by making up letters purporting to be from János who is directing a big film in New York. Luca discovers that János is alive, and is dismissed from her teaching job because of her husband. The dying mother anxiously awaits the return of her son from New York. —IMDb
Hungarian filmmaker Károly Makk was an important figure in the development of Hungarian cinema after WWII. He made his directorial debut in 1954. Prior to that, he attended the Budapest Academy of Film Art and then was an assistant director on Geza von Radvanyi’s Somewhere in Europe. While his films of the ‘60s were well respected in Hungary, Makk’s work did not receive international recognition until 1971, when his Love won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes. Since then, he has gained an international reputation. His 1982 film Another Way was the first Eastern European film to deal directly with gay and lesbian concerns. —Sandra Brennan
The tenderness of this film clashes with the air of despair which pervades it..memories wage a futile battle against the indifference of time...resilience threatens to break as one goes on enduring the fear of loneliness and hopelessness induced by circumstances...can love be a source of strength ?...can it provide the hand one can cling on to in order to prevent oneself from falling into the well of abyss ?...this film sings a song of love and loss to the music of memory and hope...a little gem from Hungary with a delicate exterior but a tough interior,which esteems the little ways in which the human spirit endures in the face of adversity (political turmoil in this case) and also acts as a beautiful evocation of the fact that film indeed is memory...