Andre de Toth’s Two Girls on the Street is somewhat
mistitled in that its two female protagonists, while initially down on their luck,
spend most of the film more than adequately housed and financed, its primary
concern being (of course) man-related. Gyongi, an aspiring violinist, is disowned
by her father after an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and eventually ends up playing
in a dive bar; she comes across Vica, a lower class factory worker, distraught
after escaping an attempted sexual assault by Csiszar, a successful architect,
and takes the dispossessed woman under her wing. Gyongi variously refers to Vica in terms evoking a daughter,
a best friend, a little doll, or even a lover; the film drops recurring hints
of some deeper communion between the two, a dynamic rendered peculiar though by
the physical similarity between them, and the fact of the actress playing
the often mothering Gyongi being two years younger than that playing Vica.
The film makes many striking choices both cinematically - such as scenes that often end more abruptly than
one expects, or in the arresting deployment of montage (for example to depict
the spread of gossip) and point of view – and narratively, as in the absence of
any depicted reconciliation after Vica’s ongoing involvement with Csiszar drives
a wedge between the two (although we see Vica celebrating Gyongi’s eventual professional
success from a distance). The film has a
distinct strand of social awareness – Vica chides Csiszar for bragging about
the buildings he’s built, saying the real work was that of the physical
labourers – and yet seems to uncritically view the two women’s materialism once
their luck changes, with the final moments appearing to exult in how Vica’s new wealth
and status separate her from those masses. But the film’s choices, omissions
and possible contradictions are consistently stimulating, even when rather
puzzling.
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