Love Details

Set in the twilight of the Stalinist era, and passing sly asides on the cult of personality, this adroit study of the dissemination and reception of propaganda is cleverly couched in terms of a delicate chamber drama. Handled with great finesse by Karoly Makk, there's genuine affection in the relationship between a wife who tries to assuage her bedridden mother-in-law's fears about her son by fabricating letters about his Hollywood success, while hiding her own pain at the knowledge he's in a labour camp. Both Mari Torocsik and Lili Darvas, the widow of the famous playwright, Ferenc Molnar, are superb.

An unsentimental film on a theme that could lend itself to mawkishness. The relationship between the two women is loving yet marked by personal differences. The wife reads the mother letters purporting to be from her son, telling her that he is making goo