“Rarely manages to remove itself from stale sentimentalism and wallowing in its characters’ poverty, both financially and emotionally.”

After his masterpiece calling-card Son of Saul and the intriguing if somewhat impenetrable Sunset, expectations were high for Hungarian director László Nemes’ third feature Orphan, a story set in post-revolution Budapest about an orphan (though technically he is not) dealing with the absence of a father he has never met. This coming-of-age drama in which the boy loses his innocence while having to deal with prejudice, and a strained relationship with his mother and her lover-out-of-necessity, has all the hallmarks of a strong melodrama, but lacks the incisiveness of Nemes’ previous films and rarely manages to remove itself from stale sentimentalism and wallowing in its characters’ poverty, both financially and emotionally.

After a brief introduction of Andor set in 1949 – and a reunion with his mother Klára (Andrea Waskovics), a Jewish woman who left Andor in an orphanage during the war as she went into hiding – Orphan shifts forward to a year after the Hungarian Revolution. Andor has become a rebellious teenager (played by newcomer Bojtorján Barabas) who has a difficult, though not loveless, relationship with his mother. As often as he can he goes into the basement of his apartment building to pray for the return of his father, who was sent to the camps, and who he personifies in the building’s boiler system down there. He spends a lot of time with his friend Sári (Elíz Szabó), whose older brother Tamás (Soma Sándor) was involved in the revolution and now lives in hiding in an abandoned building. When Klára introduces a burly man named Mihály (Grégory Gadebois) as the man that helped her stay out of Nazi hands, a makeshift family structure emerges, which is further solidified when the brutish Mihály tells Andor he is his biological father.

On paper Orphan has all the hallmarks of a solid tearjerker at the very least, with the possibility to become a moving look at the human condition in the direst of situations. Sadly, it doesn’t even hit the low bar. Nemes still has the ability to construct gorgeous shots, and Mátyás Erdély’s cinematography appropriately drains the saturation, but they are so filtered in mostly yellow hues that the image lacks definition and detail. A bigger problem lies in the writing and the lead performance by Bojtorján Barabas. His Andor goes through a whole range of emotions, but Barabas lacks the expressive skills to cover them. Nemes and his regular co-writer Clara Royer have penned a story that puts Barabas in virtually every shot, and sadly the young actor can’t carry the film. In part he is hampered by inconsistent writing. The central dynamic between Andor, Klára, and Mihály is well drawn, and especially Gadebois flourishes in these scenes with the most well-rounded performance (and character) in the film, but other parts of the story feel aimless and only there to provide Andor with an emotional arc. Every once in a while the film checks in with Tamás to keep the audience aware of him, especially since he is in possession of a literal Chekov’s gun. The way he is worked into the main plot in the final act feels contrived and reveals that the only role he serves is as a plot device to give Andor a moment where he as a child loses his innocence. It leaves a sour aftertaste, and the film’s final, strong sequence at a fairground can no longer save a work that lacks sharpness in its writing and acting talent at its heart.