Peter Strickland directs Hilda Péter, Norbert Tankó and László Mátray in this Romanian revenge thriller where a wife sets out to find her attackers, after her husband outcasts her and her son on discovering the child is the product of a decade old rape. 

We dodged a blizzard and ducked into the Filmhouse, choosing this pretty much at random to keep us out of the cold. It helped it was directed by Peter Strickland whose haunting Berberian Sound Studio and kinky The Duke of Burgundy were arty conundrums. Made on a shoestring budget, about the same amount as most people’s annual salary, this is a gritty mystery imbued with an air of folklorish fantasy. The mother and child travel by horse and trap yet use mobile phones, people in garish shell suits talk unironically about God and tradition. Katalin stares into the dark of the forest and you expect a strigoi to appear. It is languid in pace, and ultimately the conclusion is abrupt and somewhat trite. Yet as a calling card for Strickland’s ominous potential it obviously worked, and Hilda Péter delivers a knockout monologue on a rowing boat filling us in on the backstory we have been guessing at for the first two acts.

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