Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time

Directed by Lili Horvát, Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time follows neurosurgeon Márta Vizy (Natasa Stork) as she arrives at a rendezvous to meet a man she first encountered at an overseas conference – with complications ensuing after said man doesn’t show up and, eventually, denies even knowing Márta. It’s certainly a promising setup that is, slowly but surely, employed to rather tedious effect by Horvát, as the writer/director delivers an exceedingly (and, mostly, excessively) deliberate drama that contains few elements designed to keep the viewer interested – with the movie ultimately squandering a fairly interesting mystery and, as well, an effectively distant performance by Stork. (It doesn’t help, either, that the picture boasts a pointlessly graphic brain-surgery sequence.) And while the ongoing question of Márta’s sanity (or lack thereof) admittedly does buoy one’s waning attention here and there, Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time‘s wafer-thin premise ensures that it doesn’t work even as a low-key character study of a possibly disturbed individual – with the meandering atmosphere paving the way for a get-on–with–it-already second half. The eye-rollingly anticlimactic final stretch does little to redeem the mostly interminable proceedings, and it’s impossible, finally, not to wonder just what the point of all this was.

*1/2 out of ****