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‘Semmelweis’ Review: A Medical Breakthrough Is Recounted With Blunt Instruments in Hungary’s Official Oscar Selection
Miklós H. Vecsei stars as the Hungarian obstetrician who fought for cleaner delivery rooms in Hungary's official entry for the foreign feature Oscar.
Even without taking a look at a picture of the real balding and bespectacled Dr. Semmelweis, it’s immediately clear Koltai wants to deliver something that’s more popcorn than medicinal when he gives a movie star entrance to the dashing Miklós H. Vecsei, playing the film’s title role. An emergency tracheotomy of a prominent politician’s wife at a glamorous ball affords the Doctor some immediate professional protection, though the implications are so strongly assumed by the filmmakers that the film abruptly and mysteriously leaves behind the incident — only to bring it up again to justify a later development. Yet Koltai, the longtime cinematographer for th István Szabó who last directed the respectable star-studded adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s “Evening” in 2007, clearly knows how to elevate occasionally soapy theatrics to the level of an engaging film.
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