THE DAYS OF DESIRE

An urbane middle-aged couple hires a new maid called Anna, who also happens to be mute. Her new boss, Angela, states during the interview, “I’m looking for somebody who’ll stay in the job and won’t drive me mad.” At first, the young girl’s household duties seem simple enough, but as time goes on she becomes increasingly aware of the tense relationship between her employers, who lost their sixteen-year-old daughter in an accident. The grieving parents see the presence of eighteen-year-old Anna as an opportunity to alleviate their bad conscience and save their marriage at the same time. But their grim determination to be given a second chance threatens to veer out of control. After the arrival on the scene of young Miklós, whom Anna meets in a nearby supermarket, events take an unexpected and emotionally turbulent turn in which the older couple’s wish for redemption and Anna’s role as “dumb witness” have to be re-assessed. “I might be dumb. But I hear everything,” says Anna: words that initially seem to protect her from the coming events. Due to her permanent presence in the house, however, the viewer begins to see her through the eyes of her employers Angela and Zoltán, denied all access to the girl by the flat, black-and-white tone of the images. Just as the film has been drained of colour, so the couple and their projections increasingly suck away the young girl’s strength and support. How much responsibility do adults bear for young people who need to gather experience of their own so that they can stand their ground in life?