L'Affaire Abel Trem

A leaving exam failed because of a minor detail turns into a nationwide issue in which the personal failure of a single student gets blown up into a general debate about national pride in Hungary’s polarised society, in which the two opposing sides are represented by the teacher of the affected student and the student’s father. This slightly satirical drama is told from one day to the next in several storylines that alternate between the perspectives of the characters involved, resulting in the changing content of some scenes depending on the given character’s subjective point of view – ultimately, however, this doesn’t have any effect on the course of the film or its outcome. This realistically conceived and solidly written film lacks greater cohesiveness and focus, the overly divergent plot rubs up against a number of other marginal themes that serve only for developing the characters (the empty high-school romance, problems with a colleague at the father’s workplace, the personal and professional conversations of a young journalist...) and are more or less unrelated to the central leaving-exam affair. Because of that, the exposition alone is stretched out to almost an hour and, given how little actually happens in it, the film ultimately doesn’t justify its long runtime. (08/07/2024)