Rhinoceros Hunting In Budapest (1996)

Directed by Michael Hausman and premiere at the Sundance Film Festival '97.

On Rhinoceros Hunting In Budapest

The film is both dark and funny and Nick is wonderful in it as the club owner/pimp of a brothel in Budapest. The film may get a release here in the U.S. but is more likely to get a better reception in Europe.

Synopsis and credits reprinted from Sundance Festival catalog:

Details: Great Britain, 115 min, Color
Director/Screenwritter: Michael Haussman
Producer: George Klein, Samuel Hadida
Cast: Glenn Fitzgerald, Karine Androver, Nathaniel Devries, Alexei Sayle, Ewan Brenner, Nick Cave

Rhinoceros Hunting in Budapest is a beautiful and poetic work that provides an ethereal ride into a world of absurdity, isolation, and loneliness through a menagerie of abstract imagery, poignant music, and majestic dialogue.

The story begins with a young American man flying overseas to hunt rhinos in Africa with his estrange girlfriend, who is currently living in Paris. As the background of the story is revealed, we learn that his search for her may not be as sincere and untainted as he has led everyone to believe. Upon arriving in Paris, the young man encounters Teen, a lonely despondent girl in need of instant physical comfort (sex) who offers to help in the search, only to discover that the girlfriend, who now goes by the name of Lola, is working as a stripper in Budapest with her new "manager", played by a magnificently eerie Nick Cave. After a fallout with Teen, the boy makes his way to Budapest and tracks Lola down in a prostitution house where he confronts her (and his own feelings) in a chilling, choreograph climax.

The film is poetry in motion and especially notable for an inspired sound track and several different characters who dance in and out of the story like the delightfully creepy strangers your parents warned you never to talk to.

Review by Mary Kerr

Cave says, "I agreed to do it because I really like Ewan [Brenner]. I saw him in a theatrical production of Trainspotting and he was terrific."