Director Gyula Gazdag, noted in his own country for his wittily subversive documentaries, has updated the second part of Balzac's Lost Illusions from 19th century Paris to Budapest, 1968. Lucien Chardon has metamorphosed into Laszlo Sardi in Gazdag's fast-paced satire on careerism, which rings universally true, yet is armed with arrows pointed specifically at Budapest politics. The ambitious Laszlo (Gabor Mate), a novel and a volume of poems in hand, arrives from the provinces to launch his literary career. Landing a newspaper job, he becomes a successful critic. But he soon discovers there is no free launch amid the sophisticated snobbism of the literary world, and Gazdag's dubious hero hesitates but momentarily to use all his connections--primarily sexual--to their utmost. When, 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, he finds himself facing disciplinary proceedings. While some of the political nuances of Lost Illusions may lose their punch 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 company) timeless. Lost Illusions was presented at the 1983 Cannes and New York Film Festivals.