Wall Driller(Falfúró)

Like Light Physical Injuries, The Wall Driller explores the compensatory machismo of Hungary’s official leading class. Szomjas’s flashiest, most problematic film tells the sad tale of a proletarian malcontent ensconced in a monstrously depressing housing project who—even less effectually than the heroes of Bald-Dog Rock—attempts to change his life. Purchasing a power drill and slinging it across his shoulder like the anti-hero of a spaghetti western, he turns entrepreneur, boring holes in his neighbors’ walls so that they can hang mirrors or pictures. The metaphor is played for maximum smarmy innuendo, particularly once the wall driller gets mixed up with the prize member of a local prostitution ring staffed mainly by women on maternity leave. (Nothing if not topical, the film followed by less than a year the sensational trial of the “Cuki Cuties,” a bevy of hookers who operated out of an espresso bar on the Yugoslav border.