I can't help but use the cheap paraphrase, one film has already had this effect on me. If I think about it, actually more than one. The first film-memory that almost immediately strikes me on watching Candyblue is Péter Reich's No Girl Ever Has This Effect On Me. The other allusion is a documentary, Judit Kopper's Creamy Feelings.

This is certainly not surprising at all, since Attila Hazai was script-writer of one of these films, and Candyblue's director of photography and co-director, Gergely Pohárnok was also evoked in it, whereas the writer starred in the other film. No Girl Ever Has This Effect On Me, premiered in 1994, was to some extent a revelation, since it was the first time we were presented with the micro-world of celebrities of Hungarian alternative culture, that received fresh impulse here in the 90's. What's more, the personality of Miklós Déri, the somewhat shy youngster who doesn't have a way with girls, had some attractiveness to his vague character, that made one concentrate on him. It's not by chance, that No Girl Ever Has This Effect On Me became a kind of Hungarian cult-film that every now and then appears in the appropriate art-cinemas - Hunnia, Blue-Box, etc.

Attila Hazai is one of the leading characters of Judit Kopper's documentary, Creamy Feelings. This choice of character is one of the very virtues of the film, because the nonconformist, consciously subcultural attitude and lifestyle of Attila Hazai - of some limited fame as a writer at the time - and his friends, perfectly confronted the calculated, designed, yuppie pragmatism of today's heroes, the twins who are representing the successful entrepreneur lifestyle...

On watching the opus billed with the name of Attila Hazai, therefore, the basic question for me was whether the co-authors have anything new to say about this world, which inevitably also serves as a basis of Hazai's prose. Furthermore, whether the main virtue of this prose, already published in two volumes - Feri, or Candy Blue, Budapest Schyzo - namely the rope-dance on the verge of natural and ironic styles, is possible to present visually. Alas, my answer to both questions is a definite no. The film doesn't present much novelty, since although on studying the titles we do find some difference in cast and credits, this is the same subculture, and Attila Hazai's point of view has not changed either by becoming a director here.

No doubt, the leading figure of Candyblue, Feri is even more enervated, more peripheral, more thoroughly outcast than the figures of the earlier films. It seems that he has nothing substantially more to do than talk to his buddies. His life is eventless and accidental, the only particularity he has is his addiction to sugar. This addiction can certainly be replaced by any other addiction, especially the one to drugs, which, as we know, takes up most of one's time. The film is the story of his wonderful, although somewhat unmotivated, escape from this addiction.

Feri - although being an excellent alter-ego of Tibor Vécsy - cannot become interesting enough, some of the supporting cast, e.g. Kele, alias Tibor Kovácsy easily steals the show from him. The hat story for example, especially exciting in the prose, is neither visually well presented, nor is it well acted. The woman in the mother's role is an incomprehensible miscast in the otherwise perfect selection of characters. We actually only get to know her importance from the "presented" text. What's more, we either believe or not the extreme, annihilating effect of wearing the hat on Feri - which ultimately leads to his returning the hat - but we cannot be convinced about it in the film. The main reason for this is that the conscious interchange of natural and ironic that is a quality of the text, is only presented here and there in the acting, but isn't consequently obvious either in the art direction, or in the photography. Maybe the final picnic-scene is the only refreshing exception. It is only the dull, declamatory speech of the actors that suggests that what we hear we don't have to take for granted.

The tired-grey print, that indeed is hard on the eyes, evoked memories of the old films made in Balázs Béla Studio. These films had only zero-copies, since the Film Directorate didn't allow standard copies to be made. As it turned out from interviews with the authors they didn't wait for the decision of the present "directorate", i.e. they didn't apply to the "great financial foundations" but begged for the money elsewhere and enjoyed the opportunity of independent creation. "Filming on private routes" - as we have seen as the motto of another film, also finalised in the Duna Workshop - is an extremely important opportunity, especially in times when film-making is more and more uniformed, "multiplexed".

It was Péter György who in the periodical Élet és Irodalom asked the "somewhat savage sounding aesthetic question" - probably shared by others as well - in connection with the film, when the presentation of the inner world of a subculture becomes art and when it is purely to be considered as a document of an era. In his opinion the second case occurs when "the self-conscious coziness within the community has no reflection on the work of art". Péter György's question is absolutely correct. His answer, however, is much less convincing, let's just thing about Dog's Night Song or János Xantus' The Rock Convert. Both films contain "self-conscious coziness within the community", as well as other elements. The problem with Candyblue is not that it presents a closed community, but that it cannot reflect the parodistic irony the novel contains. Without this, the viewer who is over thirty, hasn't read the book, never used to go to pubs such as 'Hold' or 'Tilos az Á' and eats chocolate bars ('Balaton szelet') one at a time, gets thoroughly insecure. I truly have no idea if I wasn't such a busy film-fan and didn't - out of pure snobbery - consult Hazai's writings, what kind of clues I would have had to understand what I have seen.

The end of the Millenary is the world of co-existing subcultures, many think that this will serve as a basis of the next millenary's substantial feeling of life, undertone. We cannot not accept this. We therefore have to listen to the news coming from the subcultures. O.K., I'm listening, but if I wish to see life without life, I'm going to remain with Fernando Pessoa.