Gloomy Sunday

by PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * * )

A lush romantic drama set against the beautiful backdrop of wartime Budapest, this German film seems like a fanciful extrapolation of an urban legend which has grown up around the famous Hungarian song of the title.

Gloomy Sunday - in Hungarian Szomoru vasarnap - is a clever set of harmonic progressions, affecting, even marginally haunting, though rather pallid when placed alongside, say, Cole Porter's Every Time We Say Goodbye.

It was composed in the early 1930s by Rezso Seress, who played it often in the Kis Papa restaurant in the Hungarian capital. The myth (as often debunked as advanced) that it has prompted the sudden suicides of hundreds who have heard it is the pungent idea that drives an entertaining film.

The screen restaurant is run by Jewish owner Laszlo Szabo (Krol) with his lustrous sweetheart Ilona (Marozsan). The couple hire a pianist, Andras (Dionisi, an Italian with an uncanny resemblance to a young Daniel Day-Lewis), who falls for Ilona, and a civilised menage a trois ensues.

When Andras composes the tune of the title in Ilona's honour, the effect is electric on the central characters (one says it is "saying something you don't want to hear even though you know it's true") and the wider community.

The snake in this rather lush grass is a restaurant regular, a travelling salesman, Hans (Becker), who is yet another aspirant for Ilona's affections. Her tender rejection of his advances sows the seeds of disaster when, three years later, he returns as an SS colonel.

It's an absorbing storyline with a dramatic punch and an excellent closing twist. The performances, particularly Krol's, are thoughtful, even if the characters are sometimes less likeable than they ought to be.

But the film is hampered by abrupt changes of tone: by turns romantic, dramatic and unintentionally comic (the stories of the suicide epidemic look oddly ridiculous and there's an inappropriate running gag about a lexicographically obsessed secretary).

The music, cleverly underscored, becomes another character which unifies these disparate elements, and the result is an old-fashioned drama to please those who think they don't make movies like they used to.

Cast: Erika Marozsan, Joachim Krol, Stefano Dionisi, Ben Becker

Director: Rolf Schubel

Running time: 115 mins

Rating: M

Screening: Bridgeway