“This dress bugs me”: Eszter Balint in Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise” (1984)

In Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise" (1984), Eva (Eszter Balint), a young Hungarian who is moving to Cleveland to live with her aunt, stops in Brooklyn to visit her cousin Willie (John Lurie) and his friend Eddie (Richard Edson). Although Willie first dislikes her and refuses to speak Hungarian with her, he eventually gives her a dress as a present. But later, in a scene that has stuck with my wife Andrea and me, Eva throws the dress away and mutters to herself, in her Hungarian accent, "This dress bugs me." That phrase, with Balint's pronunciation, has long since become part of our private language when we find small things annoying. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 March 2025)