DAY 2. Cartoons!

Hungarian director György Kovásznai’s Bubble Bath (also known as Habfürdő) is a wildly idiosyncratic, deeply personal and totally irresistible animated musical that feels like it shouldn’t exist, yet I’m so incredibly glad it does.

Zsolt (voiced by Kornél Gelley, sung by Albert Antalffy) is a walking ball of neuroses. He looks like a stoned hippie alleycat or an Eastern European Frank Zappa stuffed into a rented tux. He’s supposed to be getting married, but instead, he panics and bursts into the apartment of Anikó (voiced by Vera Venzcel, sung by Kati Bontovits), the best friend of his fiancée. She’s a medical student who looks like a curvier, leggier, post-modern Betty Boop. What follows isn’t a high-stakes adventure, but a hyper-stylized, claustrophobic bottle episode of romantic indecision. They are two people deeply unsure of their attraction to each other, terrified of the choices they’ve made, and completely paralyzed by what the future holds.

To describe Bubble Bath’s visual style is to sound like a lunatic. Kovásznai mashes up 1920s Art Deco elegance, 1960s psychedelia and late 1970s decadence. The animation is incredibly restless and endlessly creative. Characters morph, dissolve and vibrate with nervous energy.  The backgrounds shift with the characters’ psychological states. It’s a musical where the songs don’t just advance the plot; they deconstruct the characters’ psyches in real-time.

The main inspiration for the film struck György Kovásznai when he realized most animated movies focused on bringing fantasy worlds to life with realistic animation. Reflecting on the popularity of 1970s science fiction, fantasy, disaster and adventure films, he decided that these genres actually worked better in live-action. He argued that because children are exposed to animation from a young age, they inherently know cartoons aren’t real, making any attempt at realism pointless.

Instead of making a Disney-style fantasy film, as most animation of the tiome did, he wondered if the medium was mature enough to tell real-world stories. Kovásznai wanted to create complex, authentic human characters grappling with deep personal and societal issues.

Sadly, this went down as the biggest flop in Hungarian animation history. Theatrical screenings were chaotic; angry adults and crying children routinely stormed out of theaters, prompting some cinemas to quietly swap the film for a different movie just to keep audiences in their seats.

Kovásznai was reportedly devastated by the overwhelming backlash from critics, audiences and the box office alike. However, the reception wasn’t entirely hostile. A few contemporary reviews praised the project. For instance, critic and art historian István Kristóf Nagy claimed he couldn’t find a single fault in the film, confidently predicting it would find a massive audience.

In the wake of the disaster, technical director Jenő Koltai published a lengthy essay in Pannónia Studio’s magazine analyzing the failure. He concluded that the general public was simply unready for an animated movie that tackles realistic urban themes. After its disastrous release, the film was largely forgotten until the 2000s, which sparked a massive resurgence of interest in Kovásznai’s broader body of work. Because of this profound cultural shift, the film is now officially categorized in Hungary as a nemzedéki közérzetfilm—a “generational mood film.“

Tragically, this was Kovásznai’s only feature film. A painter, philosopher and animator who refused to conform to Western or Soviet commercial standards, he passed away from leukemia in 1983 at the age of 49, leaving behind a legacy of short films and this lone, sparkling anomaly.

Thankfully, the National Film Institute in Hungary has beautifully restored the film, and the cinematic saints over at Deaf Crocodile have given it its first-ever official U.S. release. You can watch it on Tubi.