Napszállta or Sunset,  the new film from hot Hungarian director László Nemes (41, director of Son of Saul) is a tedious pretentious shaggy dog story about a fancy women's hat store in Budapest on the eve of World War I.

The director was evidently gaga over the new face of actress Juli Jakab and made sure she is in nearly every frame of the film, mostly in full screen facial closeups.  Good looking she is but after a while one has had enough of the twists and turns of her perfectly chiseled nose from every possible angle as she agonizes her way through an extremely shaggy script.  The photography is even more murky than the obscutities of the story, not worth going into, and co-concocted by a French lady with a very heavy hand.  Unnecessary blurred background scenes may have been an intentional effect or it might just have been that the DOP was out to lunch.  My feeling is that the director thought it was an artistic touch. I sat through all 142 tedious minutes mainly to take notes on how many points at which it would have been appropriate to ankle the proceedings.  (at least five counting from the halfway mark).  This is arguably the worst Hungarian film ever made. The second worst was Son Of Saul by the same director. awarded  the Best foreign film Oscar two years back.  Go figure...

Some of the built in tedium may be due to the fact that Mr. Nemes worked as an assistant to tedium master Bela Tarr for two years.

Ps: the original Hungarian title Napszállta is a pretentiously poetic word for Sunset which in normal parlance is Naplemente, literally Sun going down.