“Ground Floor isn’t any sort of grand masterpiece, but it is more clever than you might think despite its comedic roots and small scale.”

Kristóf (Ádám Tompa) and his wife Vera (Bettina Józsa) are on the verge of their summer holiday. On top of that, Vera has just found out she is pregnant with their first. These should be happy times. But then, through a freak happenstance, Kristóf finds out they have a vicious mold growing behind their closet. What starts as an investigation into where the mold comes from, becomes a Kafkaesque journey through snitching superintendents, corrupt building managers, drunk mold specialists, older women who want to stuff him with baked goods, and younger women who want to take their clothes off for him. He uncovers a web of lies, secret building permits, damaging inspection reports, and a swimming pool, and slowly starts a revolution in the building.

Three years ago Hungarian director Gábor Reisz won the Venice festival’s Orizzonti section with his film Explanation for Everything, then a timely film in an era of increasing polarization and unwillingness to listen to ‘the other side’, reflecting Hungarian society in 2023. Given this win, it was surprising to see his new film, Ground Floor, show up in the less regarded Venice Spotlight section. But after seeing it, the choice of the festival to ‘relegate’ (for lack of a better word) Reisz to this section is understandable. Not because the film is bad, mind you; far from it, in fact. But Ground Floor is a much smaller film in both scope and execution, if not in intent. For the most part the film moves through the apartments and floors of one building, with an increasingly exasperated Kristóf trying to root out both the physical source of the mold and the metaphorical source of corruption. The apartment building is meant as a reflection of the cracks in Hungarian society after 16 years of virtual dictatorship under ousted prime minister Viktor Orbán. Even though the film was written before the April elections in which Orbán was defeated by Péter Magyar, the idea of cleaning house and getting rid of a pesky mold is just too beautiful to ignore as a metaphor of Hungary’s current state of affairs, even if perhaps it was not entirely intentional.

In Tompa, Reisz has a perfect embodiment of the Hungarian people trying to grope their way through the bureaucracy and corruption, with the actor giving a well-modulated performance as the increasingly bewildered and frustrated Kristóf. A large part of why this tragicomedy works, besides the myriad ways in which Reisz and co-writer Éva Schulze’s screenplay throws up hurdles for the protagonist, is Tompa making his way through conversations full of sharply written, almost Groucho Marx-esque dialogue. His conversations with Rodrigo Crespo’s corrupt building manager Balázs, who consistently (and intentionally) mispronounces Kristóf’s last name, are like two tennis players hitting forehand after forehand at each other. The rest of the cast, including veterans like Tünde Bacskó and György Gazsó, have clearly defined archetype roles that are thrown in the mix mostly to add to Kristóf’s confusion.

With Ground Floor, Gábor Reisz has delivered another insight into how Hungarian society works its way through the difficult political and social situation where it finds itself. This time it’s a sharply written satire that may be more lightweight and less of a grand statement than his previous film, but hits the mark with its funny comedy of manners. Reisz remains a director to watch because of the ease with which he manages to blend comedy and drama while putting his finger on the pulse of Hungarian society. Ground Floor isn’t any sort of grand masterpiece, but it is more clever than you might think despite its comedic roots and small scale.