White Palm

Genre: Drama

Language: Hungarian

Director: Szabolcs Hajdu

Cast: Zoltán Miklós Hajdu, Kyle Shewfelt, Gheorghe Dinica

Runtime: 97 mins

Official Website: http://www.fehertenyer.hu/

Plot:

Miklos Dongo is an Olympic gymnast whose career was ended by an injury. He comes to Canada to begin a new life as a coach. Miklos is assigned to train one of Canada’s most gifted young hopefuls. But the young man is vain and volatile and Miklos has difficulty establishing a rapport with him. Miklos comes to understand that if he is to establish a working relationship with the young man, he must overcome his own fears and confront his past, in which he suffered under the brutal training regimen of a diabolical coach.

Watched the movie on 1 Mar afternoon @ The Picturehouse with Sylvia.

We see that no champion wins without hardwork and efforts put in. Behind every athletic, there are a lot of unknown sufferings, pain, blood and sweat through all kinds of training. There will be a point that breaks and then his whole athletic career may just end. I believe this is happening even now in all parts of the world in order to train international champions.

However, not all careers come to an end, only one who could not continue due to certain reasons. There bound to be a way out with "so much equipped" talents such as the male lead of this movie. Now only, he turned his gymnast career to a performer in the circus, he helped another gymnast as well as himself.

On a side note, featured in the movie, Kyle Shewfelt is a Canadian gymnast, who in real life a real one. His gold medal in the men's floor exercise competition at the 2004 Athens Olympics was the first medal ever by a Canadian in an artistic gymnastics event and was the first Canadian gold of the 2004 Olympics.

ah-deng says: 2/5 Decent movie but lack of pace.