A large-scale attempt to integrate the real-life story of three people into an overall view of women as an underprivileged group, Film Novel uses a non-professional cast whose own situations resemble their parts in the film. Sight And Sound critic Mari Kuttna notes: “The contrasting personalities of the girls vary the pace and mood. They first appear in close-up, talking of their dreams and ambitions, and the next few years show not how they grow, but how they become cramped, stunted, defeated by the limitations on their lives.” Altogether one of the most remarkable and ambitious, not to say subversive, works from the New Hungarian Cinema.