This recently restored gem by the great Hungarian director Márta Mészáros is a multilayered melodrama set in Budapest as the Nazi threat is rising. Among its many virtues is a wonderful performance by a young Isabelle Huppert. She plays Irén, a Jewish shopgirl of modest means who is befriended by Szilvia (Lili Monori), an heiress who is unable to give birth, and who pays Irén to conceive a child with her husband (Jan Nowicki). The situation is fraught with class distinctions and moral dilemmas, and evolves into a twisted emotional triangle complicated by the clear homoerotic tension between the women. Emotionally absorbing and exquisitely crafted, it is also an incisive study of prewar European decadence.