The two become acquainted and Z falls in love with her, but Lili, who is carrying a bomb which she plans to use to kill the minister of the interior, remains focused on her politics even when her plot fails.

[5] Peter Bradshow wrote in The Guardian that "My 20th Century is a jeu d’ésprit, a whimsical erotic fantasia of central Europe, a millennial meditation on modernity, all in black-and-white and infused with the spirit of early cinema.

"[7] Toronto International Film Festival curator Dorota Lech wrote that My 20th Century was a "mischievous fairy tale of synchronicity and fin-de-siècle wonder" and established Enyedi's reputation as "an early pioneer of female science-fiction cinema and a master of labyrinthian storytelling."

My 20th Century, she goes on, has "a narrative concerned with both universal concepts and material dilemmas, cutting across space and time, sprinkled with irony, symbolism, and documentary realism" and "centers on the twin origins of modernity and cinema, both born of electricity."

These diverging narrative threads of male scientific triumph over nature and female biological capability are prodded and reflected in a kaleidoscope of turn-of-the-century events."

He says that the opening sequence is "clownish yet a little ominous" and "sets the tone for a film that will pay homage to the exuberance of early cinema while musing on the mixed blessings of a machine-dominated modernity."

Owen explains that the pigeon at the end of the film "conveys the lost romance of pre-technological communication" and "recalls the failure of modern technology to realize its utopian potential and achieve genuine global and social connection."

Owen identifies a number of silent films that are referenced in My 20th Century, including 1921's Orphans of the Storm (which stars Lillian and Dorothy Gish, whose names are similar to Lili and Dóra's), 1926's Now You Tell One, and 1928's The Little Match Girl.

The inventions of electric light, flight, the telephone, movies, radio, television and computer microchips are now taken for granted, but... science has also diminished our sense of the miraculous."