Bubble Bath

Hungarian director György Kovásznai's wildly idiosyncratic animated musical is one of the most indescribably strange, personal and totally irresistible cartoon features ever made. A walking ball of anxieties, shop window decorator Zsolt (voiced by Kornél Gelley, with Albert Antalffy singing) bursts into the apartment of his fiancée's best friend Anikó (voiced by Vera Venzcel, with Kati Bontovits singing), paralyzed with fear at his impending marriage. Zsolt is like a stoned hippie alleycat, or an Eastern European Frank Zappa in a tux; medical student Anikó a more curvaceous and leggy post-modern Betty Boop – and both unsure of their attraction to each other, of the choices they've made, of what life has in store for them. A truly insane mash-up of styles, from 1920s Art Deco to 1960s Psychedelia to late 1970s louche Roxy Music decadence, BUBBLE BATH is incredibly restless and creative, the bohemian love-child of Bill Plympton's off-kilter individualism and Ralph Bakshi's wonderfully warped, rubbery visual style. In other words: it's not quite like any animated film you've ever seen before. Sadly, this was director and animator Kovásznai's only feature film -- he died of leukemia in 1983. BUBBLE BATH has been beautifully restored by the National Film Institute in Hungary for its first-ever U.S. release by Deaf Crocodile. In Hungarian with English subtitles.