Deaf Crocodile Films: Bubble Bath (1979) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Deaf Crocodile Films

Hungarian director György Kovásznai was an accomplished film animator in his native country having directed as many as fifteen surreal avant-garde animated shorts spanning from 1963 to 1974 before embarking on his one and only feature film Habfürdö or Bubble Bath in 1979.  Recently restored by the National Film Institute in Hungary for its first-time home video release in the United States thanks to Eastern European focused boutique label Deaf Crocodile Films, the sole feature effort of Kovásznai is a near-unclassifiable romantic romp mashing together a myriad of artistic styles and innovative designs.  While sadly the director passed away of leukemia in 1983 not long after the film came out, Bubble Bath revived by Hungary and released domestically in a deluxe special-edition blu-ray featuring five rare short films of the director’s oeuvre is a minor cause for celebration and discovery among animation and genre fans that winds up being something of a feminist allegorical precursor to Persepolis or more recently My Love Affair with Marriage.

 
Nervous seemingly nebbish shop-window decorator Zsolt (voiced by Kornel Gelley) stumbles into the apartment of his fiancé’s best friend Aniko (voiced by Vera Venzcel) looking for consolation for his anxieties and fears about marriage to Aniko’s friend nurse Klari (voiced by Lenke Loran).  From there, Zsolt, a spitting image of Frank Zappa if he were Hungarian and Aniko, a Betty Boop inspired medical student, develop unspoken feelings for one another in their kindred misgivings about their modern Hungarian lives.  From here the film becomes a shape-shifting musical love triangle that abandons linear conventional storytelling form for a kaleidoscopic descent into heighted psychedelia.  Mixing together animation and elements of live action, the film becomes a broad portrait of contemporary romantic life in Hungary while striving to separate itself from the traditional pack of like-minded animated features.

 
Bizarre, playful, provocative and never slowing down for a second, Bubble Bath from its funky/jazzy/Roxy Music inspired score by Janos Masik to arresting editing by Magda Hap and cinematography by Arpad Lossonczy is a bit like drinking a martini.  At first it seems strong and garish, but over time its flavors seep into your taste buds almost like a tart dessert.  Somewhere between the styles of Ralph Bakshi, Terry Gilliam and especially the work of Gerald Scarfe, Bubble Bath isn’t so much a traditional story as it is a trip through the peculiarities of life in Hungary.  Predating Cat City by a few years but far more experimental and avant-garde in visual approach, it represents animation for thinking adults rather than minors and plays onscreen a bit like a nebulous moving painting across a hazy canvas rather than a story you can follow clearly.

Though the film did not catch on in it’s native homeland upon initial release, the film in the years since has amassed a cult following prompting the eventual restoration and re-release, Bubble Bath running a mere seventy-nine minutes joins Yellow Submarine or Belladonna of Sadness as an audiovisual animated acid trip of sorts.  A movie representing a career summation of György Kovásznai’s life’s work, themes and fixations, the 4K restored Hungarian animated epic is an arresting tour-de-force sure to blow the viewer’s senses apart.  Deaf Crocodile’s ongoing efforts to curate and publish select cult gems like this and bring them to eagerly awaiting moviegoers tiring of the same old Disneyfied animated flick remain vital to the animated film community in one that gleefully refuses to fit into any sort of box.

--Andrew Kotwicki