This ambitious, enjoyable sci-fi experiment from Hungarian film-maker Kornél Mundruczó (director of the 2014 apocalyptic canine drama White God) centres on baby-faced Syrian refugee Aryan (Zsombor Jéger, resembling a young Gael García Bernal), who develops the ability to fly after being separated from his father and shot on illegal arrival on the outskirts of Budapest. A corrupt doctor named Stern (Merab Ninidze) is called in to treat him but smuggles him out of the camp, declaring him an angel and pimping out his powers for money under the guise of protection. Stern hides the escaped Aryan from evil cop Laszlo (György Cserhalmi) in his Budapest high-rise, and the film turns into something of a thriller (complete with car chases and subway shootouts).
It’s unclear whether we’re to see scenes of Aryan floating down the side of an apartment complex, gambolling through a pink sunset and harnessing gravity to turn a bullying racist’s house upside down as straight sci-fi or magic realism. Either way, the camera stylishly mobilises perspective in interesting, inventive ways, skidding low and loping high. A shame then that the muddled narrative becomes similarly untethered and never quite lands.
