I should probably start this critique with a disclaimer. I ended up writing about films from more countries than just the ones that qualified for the World Cup. About halfway through this project I decided to just publish everything that I wrote. It didn’t make sense to let anything go to waste, so occasionally you may encounter some ‘outcasts’ within this series.
As for Athina Rachel Tsangari’s second feature film, it first appeared in US theaters -while on the festival circuit back in 2011, and was apparently intriguing enough to get a distribution deal with Strand Releasing. Strand gave the film a limited theatrical run in the US during the spring of 2012, which would last about 3 months and which never got shown on more than 2 screens. Later that summer, Strand released a DVD version of the film, which effectively made the film accessible to Americans who don’t live anywhere close to New York City, because that’s how things work in my country.
Even today though this is not a difficult film to find. It’s still streaming on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Mubi and Kanopy. Facets also had a copy in their collection which they sent to me in order to fulfill one of my requests. Had these options not worked, libraries would have been a really easy alternative as well. According to worldcat.org there were copies being held at 4 public libraries within a 20 mile radius of where I live. Based on my own personal experience there was once 5 such libraries. I actually visited the infamous library #5 one day while checking out some other stuff and found a copy sitting on a cart of material that the library was attempting to sell. From what I gather not enough people had checked it out and subsequently had been weeded from their collection. And naturally this occurred after I had devised the concept for this project and had already identified the film as a potential selection for Greece. I’ll give the library credit for attempting to offer it to the general public, in the hopes that some weirdo like myself would come along and purchase it, saving it from …….. from ……., actually I’m not quite sure what would have happened to the DVD? But the important thing is that I saved it from whatever fate it would have endured. Plus I can now say that I am a legitimate owner of at least one film in this series, all thanks to the $0.50 that I gave to a library to take this film off their hands. What a world we live in.
The film starts with a static shot of two women facing each other, cast against a blank, white stucco wall. After a passionate kiss between the two, it’s revealed that one is teaching the other about the art of romance. The student though grows tired of this particular lesson and such agitation soon results in a bevy of childish, immature acts escalating to the point where both women end up mimicking the behavior of wild animals. Such an introduction put on display the film’s artistic intent as well as its ambition to achieve intrigue by being modestly eccentric. At the onset the film’s esoteric qualities do prove to be charming enough to make the film enjoyable to watch, but yet this is filmed in an environment that for the most part clashed with such silliness.
The cinematography was wonderfully photogenic in a series of static shots designed to capture the landscape of the town where this was filmed. This approach was used so much in the beginning of the film that you couldn’t help to feel as if the town itself was cast as the star of the picture. It captured a hidden yet intrinsic beauty amongst the cold, bleak, rusted steel of the town’s decaying industrial ruins. In this imagery the filmmakers very effectively captured an ambiance of sterile listlessness, devoid of any life or humanity. In fact in many of the film’s scenes I couldn’t help but notice the lack of people, especially in the hospital scenes, a setting where you would expect some traffic. There was a certain eeriness in the town’s vacant, hollow feel; an epidemic so severe that it forced the main character to play foosball all by herself in the hotel lounge.
The atmosphere of this place is the type that seeps into the bones of its inhabitants, which includes two peculiar adult females who are stuck in dead end jobs. These two though repress this process as much as possible by imitating the behavior of the exotic creatures that they see on televised nature shows hosted by David Attenborough and by performing awkward, bizarre rituals in the dilapidated town square which suggest that the duo may have also seen the “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch from Monty Python. In one notable sequence the pair tiptoe their way along the stone path until they face plant themselves into a wall, in a truly conspicuous bit of symbolism suggesting that the harsh reality of the world around them is unavoidable.
What little narrative the film contained paid deference to this symbolic insight, despite coming across like a neglected afterthought. In the main story, the main character Marina has to deal with the impending death of a parent, which is hardly uncharted territory for film culture. In the secondary narrative Marina has to overcome her tendencies towards social isolation and alienation, and is slightly more intriguing despite being rather jejune and unimaginative. Each narrative seemed to slowly march towards a commonplace eventuality with no suspense or drama to speak of. Overall both stories are told in a rather subtle, understated manner that managed to be enigmatic, but not to the point of being completely unintelligible. The only noteworthy aspect of the writing is the film’s dialogue which was often playful, yet dry and coy in its humor. The dialogue at times also achieved some modest poignancy.
As the film progressed the cinematographic approach became much more intimate, with more focus turned towards the characters, allowing the film’s most reliable source of excitement, it’s acting, to take center stage. Ariane Labed as Marina gave the film’s best performance with a vividly emotional portrayal of her character. The nervousness and vulnerability that she showed when attempting to seduce her client was downright artistic in its expressiveness. Labed allowed her character to wear her emotions on her sleeve, hinting at a persona that’s a few personal setbacks away from a mental collapse. Contrasting Labed’s character is Evangelia Randou who played Bella as a far more composed, polished and confident personality. Granted at times Randou’s performance could be a bit too stoic and mechanical. But while Labed offered more to satisfy the film’s desire for emotional complexity, Randou’s performance was better suited to its comical and farcical bent. Vangelis Mourikis as Spyros seemed to offer something for both of these divergent aims. At times we see Mourikis’s character indulge in the juvenile games of his daughter, but mostly he played the role with such a sobering sincerity, that he effectively served as the grounding force of reality for the film. Yorgos Lanthimos to some degree may have also provided some reality to the film, but played his character is such a normal conventional way, that it felt too boring and dull to really leave much of an impression. In this film one does not stand out by playing a role in a straight, forthright manner.
As a whole the acting performances teetered on the edge of madness by injecting a decent amount of absurdity to the film. And yet there was something subtle and meek and unassuming in this quirkiness. I never felt as if the characters were legitimately crazy but rather that they were merely playacting at being crazy. There was a certain purpose and intent behind their behavior that made it seemed forced. In acting like wild animals there was perhaps on one hand a social critique on the town’s inadequacies for human inhabitation, and on the other a subconscious desire for escape. This was perhaps the only aspect of the performances that could ever so slightly suggest a suppressed primordial urge.
This is an odd film to develop a strong opinion about. At times it can be a bit boring and slow, resembling a typical artsy slog through nothingness. Yet it contains enough weird, absurdist humor to stand apart from other films that share a similar stylistic approach. It was also beautifully shot with a sharp eye towards capturing a culture (and perhaps also a country) in a state of decay, which allowed the film to succeed at being just intriguing enough to enjoy.