Anna seems to be the master manipulator, using her wit and her sexuality to further her ends, but her seeming independence and breezy manner is contradicted by her servile role and her lack of means. Essentially a series of conversations in which the worldly concerns of money and power lead the whispering conspirators on to existential grief – as in the above quote – within the batting of an eyelid. Cinematographer Sándor Kardos weaves his camera through the apartment, giving at once a cinematic grandeur to wrangling while at the same time squeezing the characters into a languidly claustrophobic corner. Eschewing his habitual acid rain monochrome, Tarr uses vibrant colours – oranges and blues – almost as characters in themselves. There’s a wild inventiveness to some of the shots – we scrutinise the unwilling household through the ceiling and then in a jaw-dropping shot through the floor – but in the bravura there is also a feeling of dissatisfaction with the stasis of what is essentially a chamber piece.

Tarr’s collaborators are beginning to form around him, including composer Mihály Víg who will create such wonderful scores for Tarr’s later films, particularly Werckmeister Harmonies and The Turin Horse, but he hasn’t yet happened upon novelist László Krasznahorkai, the chronicler of Satantango and the muse who will become the scenarist throughout the rest of Tarr’s career. With its heavy formalism and humorless melancholy, Autumn Almanac is often in danger of sinking under the weight of its influences: August Strindberg and Ingmar Bergman feel like the usual suspects here. However, the committed performances, masterful framing and the beautiful dying waltz of the camerawork are enough to hold the attention and to indicate the masterworks which are yet to come.

John Bleasdale | @drjonty