TAXIDERMIA is the story of three generations: a grandfather, a father, and a son. The dim grandfather, an orderly during World War Two has bizarre sexual fantasies. The hugely obese father seeks success as a speed eater in the post war Soviet era. The grandson, a corpse-like taxidermist, yearns to create a work of art by stuffing his own torso.Historical facts and surrealism become intertwined, not unlike the magical realist work of Gabriel García Marquez or the Hungarian writer Lajos Parti Nagy. In fact the script is based on two of the latter’s stories. Palfi added the third story, that of the grandson the taxidermist.The story begins with the grandfather, Vendel Morosgoványi (Csaba Czene) as a young solider in WW2. He serves a remote outpost where he is berated by his lieutenant and has only the lieutenant’s fat wife and two beautiful daughters for company. He retreats into the realm of increasingly extreme sexual self-gratification. He watches the daughters’ bathing, drinks their dirty bathwater and wanks until his penis emits flames of fire. Then he sleeps with the lieutenant’s wife. When she becomes pregnant with Vendel’s child, the lieutenant executes the young solider and raises the child as his own, naming him Kálmán.In the second chapter the obese Kálmán (Gergő Trócsányi) has grown up and is competing for Hungary in international speed eating competitions. Against a backdrop of Communist spectacle, Kálmán strives to be the champion of this strange sporting arena. He falls in love with the generously-proportioned Gizella (Adél Stanczel), another speed eating competitor and the two are married. She and Kálmán embark on an idyllic honeymoon, returning afterwards to their respective factories to practice. Gizella gives birth to a tiny son, Lajos. The third chapter unfolds in the present day. The quiet Lajos (Mark Bischoff) has become a taxidermist who has no romantic prospects: he is repeatedly spurned by the supermarket cashier that he is attracted to. He is as sexually frustrated in his way as his grandfather was, but Lajos’s fertile imagination works in a very different way... His father, Kálmán, has now reached gargantuan proportions and is no longer mobile. Kálmán’s wife left him long ago so it is up to Lajos brings food and cleans the apartment where Kálmán (now Gábor Máté, in a fatsuit) sits amidst boxes of food. Completely isolated from the outside world, he is training his three cats to speed eat. One day Lajos finds Kálmán dead, possibly having exploded from overeating or having been mauled by one of the cats.
Lajos stuffs him then begins stuffing himself by locking his body onto a board of cleverly designed machines. At the end of the procedure a glass blade decapitates him and an electric saw severs his right arm. Father and son are found by Dr. Regőczy (Géza Hegedžs D.) who puts them on display at an art gallery.
Taxidermia
