Adoption (1975) A Personal Film from an Unsung Female Director (Review)

Released to Blu-ray by Second Run this week is Adoption, or Örökbefogadás to give it its native Hungarian title. A 1975 film from director Márta Mészáros, it tells the story of Kata (Katelin Berek), a forty-three-year-old factory worker embroiled in a longing-standing love affair with a married man, Jóska (László Szabó). Complications arise when Kata, contemplating her biological clock, informs her love that she wishes to have a child. Jóska, who already has a family and clearly calls the shots in their relationship, is far from keen and an impasse appears in their life. Around the same time, Kata befriends Anna (Gyöngyvér Vigh), a teenage schoolgirl who resides at the nearby children’s home after her parents had effectively disowned her for her delinquency. As Kata’s relationship seemingly splutters to a halt, Anna’s romantic life is just starting to develop, and she asks Kata if she can use her house to see her boyfriends Sanyi (Péter Fried), away from the prying, disapproving eyes of the teachers where she boards. As a strong and unexpected bond develops between the two women, Kata becomes Anna’s ally, sensitive and sympathetic to her needs. She becomes the go-between in resuming her relationship with her parents, campaigning for them to give Anna their blessing to marry Sanyi so she can start her adult life right. Reasoning that a child can find themselves abandoned even with a mother and father, Kata thoughts turn to adopting a baby from the children’s home and providing for it as a single parent.

Despite still working today at the age of almost 90, Márta Mészáros remains something of an unsung filmmaker whose work, based on Adoption, I feel needs to reach a wider audience. Of course, Mészáros herself is long since familiar to operating on the peripheries; announcing her desire to become a filmmaker at a film studio in Budapest as a teenager she was bluntly told “Girly, go home, because it’s not good to say stupid things like that”. Undeterred, the young Mészáros moved to Moscow where the communist regime had a more egalitarian view of the sexes, and commenced her studies at VGIK, the State Cinema Institute. Following her graduation in 1956, she returned to Hungary and earnestly began work as a documentarian, producing twenty-five documentary shorts in just ten years. In 1968, she made her full length feature debut with Eltavozott nap, which somewhat aptly translates as The Girl given that, in doing so, she became the first woman ever to direct a movie in Hungary.

Like all of her films, Adoption explores themes which are deeply personal to the director. As well as her time there as a student, Mészáros’ formative years as a child had also been spent in the USSR and it was there that she suffered terrible tragedy; her father, the sculptor László Mészáros was arrested and killed during the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s. A little while later, the young Márta would become fully orphaned when her mother died in childbirth. The nature then of non-traditional, unconventional families, of roots broken through external (indeed, traumatic) conditions, of cutting the cloth to fit your purpose in order to make your way in the world – all of which can be ascribed to Adoption – is clearly drawn from personal experience, whilst its inherent pragmatism also speaks deeply to the necessities of life in the East at that time.

Coming as it did in 1975, at a time when the feminist movement had begun to impact positively on film with audiences displaying a taste for ‘women’s pictures’, Adoption taps neatly into the prevailing atmosphere. But it is so much more than such (Western) pop-cultural peaks can suggest. Whilst it is easy to imagine Hollywood taking the premise of Mészáros’ movie and making it any time between the mid 70s and the early 90s with some suitably middle-aged white picket fenced Oscar winner cast against an up and coming raw young talent in the central roles, an American Adoption would be prone to mawkish sentimentality, heavy moralising, plodding melodrama and a neat and happy ending, all of which are refreshingly absent here. When Kata mentions to her young friend that they are of the right age to conceivably be mother and daughter, Anna’s reply is “I’ve had enough of parents”. In a Hollywood movie, that would not be the last word on the subject that it clearly is here. The ingrained and expected schmaltz of Western mainstream cinema would continue to draw this surrogate mother/daughter bond out, whereas Mészáros tellingly depicts both women on a night out in a club, drinking and smoking and leaning in to each other in giggling conspiratorial whispers, in ways which keep their relationship unclear to an outsider’s perspective. They could be mother and daughter, yes. But they could also be work colleagues, friends, lovers.

Likewise, Adoption is refreshingly free of the West’s obsession with morality in terms of depicting Kata’s affair with Jóska. Whilst it is clear that the patriarchy rules as supreme in the East as it does here given Jóska’s ability to have his cake and eat it – he is the one to arrange their trysts; in scenes which depict Kata waiting for him in bars and restaurants, Mészáros cleverly echoes her protagonist’s preoccupation and quiet frustration with time in terms of her biological clock. “You only meet when he wants to,” Anna remarks. “And has the time”. What’s that they say about out of the mouths of babes? There’s no sense that anyone is truly suffering from the affair – indeed, it is likely to have carried on and on were it not for Kata’s desire to start a family. Meanwhile, the film affords us a glimpse of Jóska’s own family when he introduces his Kata his wife, Erzsi (Flóra Kádár) in an attempt to show his lover the realities and responsibilities of motherhood. In many a Hollywood melodrama, this sets the scene for fireworks; the Temptress vs the saintly Madonna figure. But here Mészáros is only concerned with highlighting the inequality that patriarchy instils upon women. As a woman, Erzsi confides in Kata that she feels unhappy as a result of her husband’s belief that she should be a homemaker rather than go out and earn a wage in the workplace. Whilst Kata assures her that bringing up a child and looking after a home is work in itself, she also suggests that she could work at the factory with her, but it is obvious to all that this would never happen, just as it is as obvious that Kata herself can have no future with Jóska – both women are victims of his selfishness, his ingrained right as a man to do only what suits him. In trying to show Kata how their relationship would suffer if she pursues her dream of becoming a mother, he effectively spurs her on to achieve her ambition and bring an end to their affair.

At just under ninety minutes, Adoption feels like it comes to a close at a point where a Hollywood narrative would perhaps be gearing up for the final act and the ‘happy ever after’. Mészáros is not concerned with tying her story up neatly and succinctly in a bow for the audience; having gained permission to marry from her parents thanks to Kata’s help, Anna’s wedding party concludes with bickering and an unnerving sense that this may not be a match made in heaven as Anna’s restless frustration with the world arounds is likely to rear its head once more. Meanwhile Kata’s friendship with Anna has helped bring her to the realisation that adopting a child may be the best option for her to achieve her desire for motherhood, and the film ends with her commencing a process that may be long and difficult.

Another example of Mészáros operating in a completely different world to Hollywood lies of course in the fact that Adoption easily fits within the genre of social realism that was so skilfully produced in the Communist East throughout the Cold War period. The inherent honesty of the narrative as I have laid out signifies the filmmaker’s matter of fact nature. The consolations of sentimentality and melodrama are not on offer here. Equally Mészáros’ distinctive style signifies that we are a long way from Hollywood. Indicative of her documentarian background and its interest in people, her camera is naturally intimate, exploring the faces of her performers in extreme close-up. To me, this focus suggests the world that they are each creating, or hoping to create. Conventional society is something that goes on around them, be it East or West. It’s people, and the love that they can give, that’s important.

THANKS FOR READING MARK’S REVIEW OF ADOPTION

This month’s Pop Screen exclusive sees us (big) suit up for what many people consider the greatest concert movie of all time – Talking Heads’s wildly inventive, Jonathan Demme-directed masterpiece Stop Making Sense. Graham is joined once again by Talking Heads superfan Ewan Gleadow to discuss the band’s career, the wild visual concepts and their possible meanings, the band’s excursions into unexpected genres, Chris Frantz’s moany autobiography and so much more. 

POP SCREEN PATREON

For more Music and Pop Music Chat, check out our Podcast, Pop Screen