A true story, an escape from Communistic oppression.

TxMike

April 2020 edit: I just watched it again as a free streaming movie on YouTube, after almost 17 years, and it was totally fresh to me, still a good movie.

The definition of rhapsody is, "a highly emotional utterance : a highly emotional literary work : effusively rapturous or extravagant discourse." Which fits the title of this film. Suzanne was born near Budapest after the war in the late 1940s, and when she was a small baby her mom, dad, and sister managed to escape to America, but she was left behind with grandma, and then raised by a childless couple who in essence became her "parents." This film is her story. The critic Ebert has a good summary.

We see her as a 5-yr-old, happy with her family, oblivious to everything else and the fact that her biological family was living in California. When grandma was released from imprisonment, she came to take little Suzanne to the city for a visit, but instead had prepared for her to fly to America. Mom, dad, and sis are thrilled with the reunion, but little Suzanne while enjoying the "visit" to this wonderfully different world, was anxious to get back home. In a short conversation with dad (Tony Goldwyn) on the park swings, he says, "Give it a chance, if you still feel this way after you grow up I'll see that you go back to Budapest."

Suzanne at 15 is played by Scarlett Johansson (of Horse Whisperer and Man Who Wasn't There), an angry and rebellious teen, with a very over-protective mom (Nastassia Kinsky) who locks her in her room after finding her with a boyfriend. Suzanne had never accepted her transplantation to America, and asked her dad for the trip he had promised 10 years earlier. She went, she saw, she met her adopted family, she visited her grandmother. Her discovery was how much her grandmother had risked, and went to prison, to protect baby Suzanne. And, the fact that her mother witnessed her father being killed by a Communist soldier because dad arose to protect his daughter from the soldier's unwanted advances. This put into perspective her mom's overprotectiveness, and her distaste for Hungary. So Suzanne went home to America, with a fresh perspective, satisfied with her visit to the old world.

Good film, well-acted, although as Ebert points out is resolved in the end in a rather quick and simple manner, considering how the story was intricately woven from the beginning. For anyone who enjoys a genuine human story, this is a good one.

score /10

TxMike 11 June 2003

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0692366/