Balzac's Lucien Chardon has metamorphosed into Laszlo Sardi, Budapest, 1968, in Gyula Gazdag's fast-paced satire on careerism. The ambitious Laszlo (Gábor Máté) arrives from the provinces to launch his literary career, a novel and a volume of poems in hand. Landing a newspaper job, he becomes a successful critic but soon discovers there's no free lunch amid the sophisticated snobbism and ever-changing politics of the literary world. Gazdag's dubious hero hesitates, but momentarily, to use all his connections-primarily sexual-to their utmost. Then, following a colleague's advice ("you won't be a real journalist until an article appears under your byline that you had nothing to do with"), he writes a book review and then a counter-review under a pseudonym, and finds himself facing disciplinary proceedings. While some of the political barbs in Lost Illusions may lose their sting in the translation, the film is consistently entertaining. Its satire on a young man's bursting forth, into a society delighted to rob him of his confidence and illusions, is both timely and (remembering Balzac's Lucien Chardon, Stendhal's Julien Sorel and Co.) timeless.