A brown-haired
girl
|
Creole skin, dark unruly hair, a heart-shaped
face and enormous brown eyes: Dorka Gryllus, the pretty and
cheerful actress. Her bearing with its counterpoise positioning
of the spine is virtually that of a model’s on a catwalk,
however the tilted upper body and the smile take her figure more
towards the classic girl. The fundamental quality of Dorka
Gryllus is being in essence a girl - so much so that she’s even
termed Dorka on her homepage – a quality for which she supplies
many different variants without any particular need for
stylisation.
The lively and boisterously enquiring
creature appearing on the picture taken in the Fábry Show, for
instance, portrays her more as a jeune fille - and of the
teenager/playful variety at that.
The third picture, the source of which is a
brochure advertising some kind of floor tiles, presents yet
another girl-variation - that of the daughter of the house. This
type of advertisement requires a certain ambiguity, a kind of
sensitive balance, which doesn’t narrow down the targeted
public. And this is what Dorka Gryllus possesses. First of all
it isn’t obvious whether this spontaneously set-up picture,
spiced up with a bit of not necessarily perceivable eroticism,
is showing someone’s daughter sitting on the floor or rather his
young lover. The legs spread slightly apart, the semi-bowed
head, the upward glance and the spoon lifted to the mouth is
only as deliberate as good make up might be: we see that it
makes a woman more beautiful but we don’t know how. The
ambiguity is only reinforced by the mug of milk with its
child-like and also erotic connotations. Despite ice-lolly and
yoghurt ads I doubt that the consuming of dairy products bears
great erotic charge, but if it does it is less demonic than
domestic. And it should be mild at that or otherwise the master
of the house will laugh at the posing daughter of the house.
The consciously composed image on the cover
of her introductory CD also offers a range of the girl-topic:
the lyrically musing girl, the mysterious and sorrowful beauty
and the sexy scream of the hot chick. These characters function
purely as icons. Specific situations can be conjured around them
with difficulty since the first one is universal, while the
other two are distinctively model poses. This is precisely why
they are suitable to technically assemble the variation of the
girl-topic and thus the CD as well. The first picture is on the
back cover, the third on the inside cover, while the middle one
is on the actual CD itself – let’s add: it is the first photo
that frames all the scenes of the CD.
Beyond her girlish quality Dorka Gryllus’
other attribute is that she’s the wife of Péter Geszti,
something that in the media gives her character and background.
Break-up or no break-up this is a fact inseparable from her as
the colour of her hair or the background of a magazine cover.
They look good on joint photos since the husband is luckily
fair-haired – but of course it’s not only about joint photos.
There are disadvantages of the media trying to draw into its
circle of „dream couples” someone of a wryer nature, whose
ambitions stretch further than merely being part of a dream
couple. And Dorka certainly has ambition as well as an intention
to guard her private life.
The wedding is a good opportunity as far as
the image is concerned to expand Dorka’s repertoire with
elements of the classic woman – such as a clear-cut, seemingly
simple dress and an old-fashioned bun. The added bit of
seriousness and aging, however, with Dorka Gryllus is part of
the wedding – she’s more the classic girl type. Clearly this is
not dependent on age: Zita Görög, for example, despite being
seven years her junior, employs this scheme more obviously and
explicitly. I’m certain that Dorka Gryllus’ next
image-constructing task will be that of the girl-woman
transition.
The series of cover photos are telling even
if the model principally has to interpret the character of the
given magazine. The first three photos feature her as a young
girl – in Praktika (Tips) magazine she’s a house-proud
girl in a hand-knitted jumper with a kind line around her eyes,
the type I’ve seen on children’s portraits. The first two
Cosmopolitan pictures are typical too: designed as a Cosmo
girl, she’s at once provoking and rejecting. The positioning of
the hands on the first evokes a fiery career-woman who has a
distinctly provocative look, while the expression of the
panty-adjusting second is not in the least erotic. The last two
pictures show a woman with her hair pinned up - what’s more the
Mills and Boon-like beautiful but nondescript portrait on
the cover of Évszakok (Seasons) is an expressly classic
woman image. Not by chance is the relevant interview on
marriage. To no avail is a different story compacted into each
photo; the media is interested in the story of her marriage.
A brown-haired actress
The extent to which pigmentation and family
ties influence the career of an actress is a big issue, but in
the case of such a brown-haired girl with such well-known
relations they undoubtedly have an effect. It’s not by the
Hungarian directors of her generation that Dorka Gryllus is
recognised. Hungary of older directors on the other hand is the
Hungary of blond actresses. Dorka Gryllus is perhaps more
fortunate from this point than, let’s say, Erika Marozsán,
although she too is chosen when the theme evolves round ancient
Hungary or Romany, is in some way exotic or if she’s needing to
counterpoint blond stars (Bitches) or be fitted to them.
It is characteristic that neither of the two scenes circulating
on the internet from School of Senses emphasizes the
flawlessly acting protagonist. This strikes one as particularly
odd considering that András Sólyom was looking from the outset
for an actress befitting the system of references of Psyche
and – why should we deny it - makes her try on a blond wig in
the film…
Her early roles are based on the topic of the
dark, passionate woman. Dorka, though doing her best, is more of
a playful character. The younger directors on the other hand,
who’d be better at appreciating an interesting everyday quality,
haven’t discovered her for themselves yet. The Lovy brothers
were an exception in this respect – they really needed a
Hungaricum for Mix. This may be the reason for her
recently launched German filming career.
Her face,
As far as Dorka’s acting and especially her
mimicry are concerned she’s fairly restrained. This has both its
advantage and disadvantage: at best it has a natural and refined
effect, at worst the characters appear identical and, instead of
them, it is the actress we see. Both are true in her case. It’s
a fact, however, that the work of the actor and the camera tend
to add up, generally making restrained play worthwhile. For
instance, on this sequence taken from Gloomy Sunday it is
hard to decide what it is in fact that expresses the mounting
inner tension of the character: the minimal changes of the face
of the actress or the gradual close-up. It is precisely this
that makes the tension penetrating and credible on film.
deportment
Dorka Gryllus’s strength is her posture,
which is why she can tell stories in still photographs. Though
not up to her, her films are often based on stills: Conquest
was basically a sequence of stills, where every actor and extra
– including the mythical stag – were instructed to look slowly
upwards in a melancholy-meditative mood. Dorka was no exception
either. In a different way, but nevertheless the same is true
for Mix, which is filled with erotic pictures of Dorka.
The reason the pose on the photo is so dynamic is because the
facial expression is tastefully restrained.
and movement
It’s her well-employed posture and movements
that make her a character actor along with the fact that she
doesn’t appear to care about playing the beautiful woman. It is
no coincidence that she frequently plays fallen women or those
belonging to the dregs of society - and plays them well.
The four pictures in the top row are from the
film El Niño, where Dorka assembles the character with
the carriage of the head and the line of the neck and spine.
What’s more, she portrays the changing of the character’s status
within the scene. The other two pictures are from Kollaps
and Dallas, where again we see a similar neck-spine
angle, though this time with a different meaning.
Expressing passion with movement also helps
Dorka in the range of roles of fallen women. Often an actor will
concentrate the expression of emotions of his or her character
on a single channel – Enikő Eszenyi, for example, uses her
voice. This tends to make their acting stylised and requires an
appropriate cinematic context. What may appear stylised in
certain cases can in the perspective of a Kurdish girl or a
Gypsy woman produce a natural style.
We are witnessing the emergence of a new
range of roles and hopefully also the new image of an actress
which is based on the paradox that not all classic girls become
classic women.
(translated by Eszter Szász)
|
|