Vanity Fair Blurb

June 1999

By EVGENIA PERETZ

From the flickering eyes to the seductive, slightly guilty smile, Ralph Fiennes is never better than when he's keeping a secret. Little surprise, then, that writer-director Istvan Szabo (Mephisto) felt Fiennes was the only actor who could take on Taste of Sunshine, his highly personal epic about a Hungarian Jewish family tormented by the desire to assimilate. Set in Budapest, against the backdrop of three calamitous political regimes - the Austro-Hungarian Empire in its last days, Fascism, and Communism - the film chronicles three generations of the Sonnenschein clan, whose shame leads to nearly a century of family betrayals. For Fiennes, who plays the film's three major roles - Ignatz, the grandfather, a fiercely ambitious judge, his son Adam, an arrogant fencer who converts to Catholicism in order to compete in the Olympic games; and the grandson Ivan, a disillusioned Communist - it was more than an actor's showcase. Szabo's film, which the director describes as "the story of a great identity crisis," provided a pinnacle to Fiennes' unforgettable portrayals of haunted men in the The English Patient and Quiz Show and onstage in Hamlet.

It was also an opportunity for Fiennes, who played a Nazi commandant in Schindler's List, to visit the other side of anti-Semitism. But while that role entailed immersion in Holocaust literature, the only source Fiennes needed this time was his director, who in his 38 years of filmmaking has never shot outside his native Budapest. Recalls Fiennes,"He could tell me what it was like to be in a cafe and not trust that you weren't being bugged - [about] the ways allegiances shifted. He took me around to sites in the city to show me 'This is what happened, this is what it was like.'" Just how personal Taste of Sunshine was for Szabo unveiled itself little by little. Producer Robert Lantos recalls his first day visiting the set. "I looked around at this dilapidated building in the courtyard which looked so much like the house described in the script. I said to Istvan, 'How did you find this?' He said, 'Well, I was born here.'"