The Notebook of a Lady

Directed by Péter Forgács

A young woman in high heels does gymnastics in her garden. “That’s me”, says an elderly voice on the soundtrack. These home movies feature scenes from high society life in Hungary in the 1930s and 1940s. Fifty years on, the unnamed ‘Lady’ of the title reminisces about the dinner parties, fashions and social etiquette of the times. The second part of the film shows footage from her country estate. We see shooting parties, garden parties and her husband on his prized English thoroughbred, as well as farm labourers doing the back-breaking manual work that kept the property operating. Forgacs then introduces footage of the woman shot in the 1990s. She walks gingerly around the property, which is now uninhabited and overgrown. He weaves the old and new images together; a gesture begun in one time is finished in another. A strange dialogue is created between the elderly woman and her younger self, accompanied by the trance-like music of Tibor Szemzo.