New York Times Praises "White Palms"

The Time's Matt Zoller Seitz called the film, about a troubled Hungarian gymnast who lands a job training Olympic hopefuls a "punishing, beautiful drama."

 

Zoller Seitz lauds the film for its austere, quasi-documentary style and its cast of skilled gymnasts who perform their own routines.

 

The film stars Zoltán Miklos Hajdu, the director's brother, who is an accomplished gymnast and a performer with the Cirque du Soleil. He plays Dongo, who travels to Canada to train gymnasts who have their eyes set on the 2001 Calgary Olympics. Dongo quickly learns that the methods used to train him do not transfer well to the West.

 

The story cuts back to Dongo's early training in communist Hungary at the hands of a harsh and brutal coach. Zoller Seitz writes that these flashbacks are "essential to the construction of this psychologically penetrating film about a man, still young, whose childhood was devoid of innocence, and who now struggles not to replicate the behavior that stunted his emotional growth."