I'm sorry, but do I know you?

Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time

Cast: Natasa Stork, Viktor Bodó Director: Lili Horvát Duration: 1 h 35 m Available: TIFF Bell Digital Lightbox via digital.tiff.net. On demand and in-cinema screenings planned. Details at filmswelike.com.

Hungary's submission for best international feature film at the next Academy Awards, Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is a real brainteaser set in (appropriately), the world of neurosurgery.

Vizy Márta (Natasa Stork) is a successful neuro-oncologist, originally from Hungary but working in the U.S. We meet her in Budapest, where she's travelled to meet a fellow Hungarian she first met at a conference in New Jersey. As she tells it, they had an amazing day together and decided to rendezvous a month later at a particular bridge. How Before Sunrise.

But the man doesn't show. And when she tracks him down at work, he claims not to know who she is.

Most broken hearts would at this point slink back to Jersey, but the taciturn Márta gets a job in the local hospital (they're happy to have a doctor from America), rents a shabby apartment and starts — I guess you'd say she's mildly stalking her would-be paramour.

Writer-director Lili Horvát keeps the audience on edge by never telling us too much. Does Drexler (Viktor Bodó), really not remember Márta, or is he playing some weird game with her? Is she imagining the whole thing? She tells her therapist (who also looks a bit like Drexler), that something like this has happened before, but doesn't go into details.

Meanwhile, the neurosurgical setting allows the screenplay to bring up the mysteries of the human brain, including its unreliable memory and the so-called hard problem. To wit: How is it that a few pounds of neurons buzzing with electrochemical energy manage to feel like a person reading a film review? I'll wait while you puzzle that one out ...

You're back? Then it's time for this collection of neurons to tell you that Preparations ends on a frustratingly ambiguous note, with a seemingly likely resolution made suddenly less so in a weird final shot. If you're OK drawing your own conclusion about what happened to Márta, this will no doubt appeal. After all, deciding what you think about cinema isn't brain surgery. Or — wait — is it? ∏∏∏∏

Natasa Stork