Trivia / Foam Bath

• Better Export for You: The 2021 restored Blu-ray came out in France, courtesy of Extralucid Films, followed in 2024 by an American release by Vinegar Syndrome/Deaf Crocodile, both under the English title Bubble Bath. The only legal ways to view the film in its native Hungary are rare TV reruns, an out-of-print 2010 DVD that was originally included in a limited edition retrospective book (the book was later republished sans the DVD bonus), and video-on-demand releases that occasionally have their paywall disabled.
• Box Office Bomb: Ticket sales were about 5% of the expected amount. Attendance was so low, movie theaters sometimes straight-up ignored their schedules and played a different movie just to keep audiences in their seats. The film made history as the worst-performing animated feature of its country, and it took a toll on the studio's creative output.
• Inspiration for the Work: Seeing the success of whimsical Disney films, director György Kovásznai began to wonder if animation had become too commercialized. He also wondered whether animation is "mature" enough to reach beyond fantastical fairy tales and tell stories about the mundane realities of urban life to adult audiences.
• Reality Subtext: Zsolt's woes and rants about being a looked-down-upon store window decorator were based on the director's own early plans to take that career, until he realized that most of the art community of the time was heavily biased against window dressers, which they saw as a lowly profession.
• What Could Have Been:
  • One potential route proposed for the film was a normal, non-musical animated movie, but the director thought music and animation went hand in hand.
  • Klári's face would have resembled her voice actress more closely, with normal blonde hair and a less revealing wedding outfit. Zsolt was originally meant to look much older, with a huge, bald, wrinkly forehead, more like he's in his late 50s rather than his 40s. He would also have worn bright-colored, striped pants. Strangely, the dialogue still mentions he's balding.
  • The film was initially planned to clock in at 50 minutes but the final cut extended this to 75. This partially explains all the padding that even contemporary reviews criticized the movie for.

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