Spellbinding: Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time reviewed

The premise for the unsnappily titled Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is this: a Hungarian neurosurgeon meets a fellow Hungarian neurosurgeon at a medical conference, falls in love, and gives up her shiny life and career in America to be with him in Budapest. They had agreed to meet on one of the city’s bridges. He doesn’t show. She tracks him to the hospital where he works. He says he’s never met her before. And now we are on board. Now we have to know: is he gaslighting her? Is she crazy? How is this going to play out? This is one of those films that has you in the palm of its hand right from the off.

The film is written and directed by Lili Horvat and while a Hollywood treatment might have had this spiralling into the obsessional ungodliness of a Play Misty For Me or Misery or Fatal Attraction that isn’t what we have here.