Angelopoulos’s The Dust of Time

Even for Greek Communists exiled after the Civil War, the USSR was a cold, inhospitable place to live. The mother of Greek-American filmmaker “A” was eventually sentenced to a Siberian gulag and his father was deported, yet somehow, they still managed to find each other again. Their story inspired A’s film within the film, but memory is a tricky thing and so is the narrative approach in Theo Angelopoulos’s The Dust of Time, which screens as part of the UCLA Library Film & TV Archive’s Angelopoulos retrospective, Landscape of Time.

A's latest film is based on the letters his mother Eleni wrote to his father Spyros, while she was banished to a Siberian gulag. Even though he is filming in the illustrious Cinecetta studio in Italy, he is distracted by personal problems, mostly those generated by his disturbed daughter, also named Eleni. It appears she ran away from home, but on the plus side, he finds one of his mother’s missing letters in her room.

Flashing back to early 1950s Temirtau in Kazakhstan, where the Greek exiles had set up their own Soviet style colony, A’s parents are briefly reunited. He had assumed the identity of a dead comrade to sneak her out, but they are discovered by the other Communists. Ironically, Eleni would then spend decades with their torch-carrying Jewish family-friend, Jacob, who would become a Refusenik during his long tenure in the gulag with her.

Angelopoulos’s temporal shifts can be especially confusing, because of the way he blends the time periods in the transitional scenes, with A appearing in the past, or his youthful parents seemingly walking through the present (circa Y2K New Year’s Eve), but that also gives the film a rather striking sense of un-reality. Dust of Time also features a gorgeous score composed by the late Angelopoulos’s regular collaborator, Eleni Karaindrou. The “Dance Theme,” heard performed by a full orchestra in a recording session for A’s film and as a piano solo performed by Spyros, is wonderfully melancholy and nostalgic-sounding.

Dust is a lovely film to look at and listen to, but it still manages to capture the bleakness of the Soviet Communism—rather surprisingly so, given the general ideological tenor of contemporary Greek art house cinema. With wide, wide-swept shots of the mean, Brutalist gulag buildings and the icy surrounding tundra, Angelopoulos and cinematographer Andreas Sinanos vividly evoke the loneliness of Siberian exile. The scene of Jacob translating in a storeroom full of Stalin statues and paintings, hastily withdrawn from public display in the early days of the Khrushchev thaw, is also wonderfully surreal.

The late great Bruno Ganz gave one of the best performances of his accomplished career as the tragically friend-zoned Jacob. Irene Jacob also shows tremendous range portraying both the youthful-gulag-bound and grandmotherly Eleni. Of course, Willem Dafoe broods dependably as “A”—after the fifth or sixth time you write out “Angelopoulos,” you start to appreciate the brevity of his one-initial name (never actually heard in the film itself).

Entwined: Lost in a Greek Forest Fable

What’s Greek for “you aren’t from around here, are you?” Their diet might be Mediterranean, but Dr. Panos’s new village neighbors are as superstitious and wary of outsiders as hardscrabble Appalachians. He expects to be busy as the first ever doctor in town, but it turns out the only one he will have to save is himself in Minos Nikolakakis’s Entwined, which releases virtually today.

His father’s death from cancer left Panos’s faith in medicine shaken, so he takes a Joel Fleischman posting in a quaint mountain community, expecting it to boost his confidence. However, his arrival is met with indifference bordering on contempt. When Panos has a chance encounter with the reclusive Danae, he thinks he has finally found someone he can rescue. He figures he can treat the strange bark-like rash on her shoulder with standard drugs and deliver her from the weird old man, whom he presumes is her sexually abusive father.

However, once he spends a night with Danae, the forest will not let him leave. We can immediately see she is some kind of pagan variant on the succubus archetype, but Panos is literally bewitched. Meanwhile, only his exasperated half-brother George seems to be concerned about his whereabouts.

Entwined is a hard film to get a handle on, because it combines the aesthetics of Catherine Breillat’s adult fairy tale films (like Bluebeard and The Sleeping Beauty) with the New Greek Weird Wave. It never really works as folk horror film, because Nikolakakis keeps both the emotions and the genre elements at arm’s length. We are also always several plot points ahead of poor, bedazzled Panos, which inevitably leads to audience impatience.

Do It Yourself: Going Viral in Greece

There are people out there whose driving ambition is to go viral. Not Alkis Vidalis. He is no genius, but he understands people usually go viral for bad things—painful things. That is especially true of the “if-you’re-watching-this-I-must-be-dead” video he just recorded to clear the name of a very crooked dirty movie mogul. He was supposed to be relocated under a new identity, but Vidalis can tell they intend to fake-it-so-real. Vidalis is no fighter, but he will run, hide, and sneak as best he can in Dimitris Tsilifonis’s Do It Yourself, which releases today on DVD and VOD, from Artsploitation.

Vidalis was a small-time crook nominally associated with Joseph Forkou’s syndicate, which is why a final testament video from him implicating Forkou and clearing Daniel Bezerianos would be convincing. Unfortunately, it would be far more compelling if he were dead. Not being as dumb as he looks, Vidalis continues to play nice with Bezerianos’s production team but he slinks away at the first opportunity. Bezerianos’s dirty video studio is a huge building, so Vidalis hopes to just find a dark corner to hide in, but that will not be realistic. As the cat-and-mouse game escalates, Vidalis invites Forkou’s gang to the party. That might be a bit of an out-of-the-frying-pan kind of strategy, but at least it will shake things up.

Characterization in Do It Yourself is not even an inch deep (and the title doesn’t make much sense), but none of that interests Tsilifonis. Instead, DIY is a super slick exercise in rats-in-a-maze action, fully loaded with narrow escapes, near misses, and darkly comic bloody mayhem, Think of it as vintage Tarantino with tzatziki sauce.

As Vidalis, Konstadinos Aspiotis is hardly an electric presence, but he is credible enough skulking around and getting the snot kicked out of him. Frankly, the real star is cinematographer Angelos Papadopoulos, who gives it all an uber-stylish, Michael Mann-esque high-gloss shine. Editor Lambis Haralambidis also deserves credit for smoothly cutting together all the twists and doubling-back.

Yes, Do It Yourself is a case of style over substance, very much in the way as Tom Twyker’s Run Lola Run, but with more lurid trappings. Tsilifonis keeps the tension cranked up and maintains a bracing pace. It is all just good, cynical fun. Recommended for fans of Die Hard-esque, dude-loose-in-a-building thrillers, Do It Yourself releases today (3/5) on DVD and VOD.

DFF ’18: Third Kind (short)

Greece is known for its ancient ruins, but they produce modern ones too. This ghostly abandoned airport is the perfect setting for some post-apocalyptic drama. However, it wasn’t so long ago it was repurposed as a refugee camp. Much of the detritus is still strewn about, adding to the wasteland-like atmosphere in Yorgos Zois’s thirty-minute short film, Third Kind (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2018 Denver Film Festival.

Three archaeologists have travelled across space and time to track the source of a mysterious transmission. It has been years since the Earth was inhabited, or so they assumed. However, there may still be a survivor left amongst the rubble. Surveying the ghostly site is a surreal process, but undeniably cinematic. Still, it never fully obscures the obvious and awkward question: what sort of clash of civilizations could bring about the almost complete extinction of life of Earth? A mere lack of charity certainly cannot account for the future state of affairs.

By the way, that transmission is a repeated five note musical pattern. The first four will sound gosh darn familiar—or they should. That title is part of an extended homage to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but the final note of the classic five-tone theme has been altered—perhaps for legal reasons. Nevertheless, whenever the 5-tone figure plays, it sounds distractingly “wrong,” like someone perversely keeps hitting the wrong key.

So yes, it sounds off-key, but Yannis Kanakis’s eerie cinematography is spectacular to behold. It really is all about the otherworldly vibe, because Zois & co-screenwriter Konstantina Kotzamani’s narrative does not amount to much. Not essentially viewing by any stretch, Third Kind is still sort of worth seeing just for the gawking experience when it screens tomorrow (11/3), Sunday (11/4) and the following Sunday (11/11), as part of the Shorts: Narrative 1 program at this year’s Denver Film Festival.

Thessaloniki ’18 on FS: In Situ

Thessaloniki and Athens are sort of like Chicago and New York. Even though the former is usually overshadowed by the latter, they can at least lay claim to having a distinctive avant-garde jazz scene all their own. Indeed, a free improvisational music scene exploded in the Aegean city after the fall of the military regime and it has held on ever since. Although they use the term “jazz” intermittently, the Free Jazzers discuss in depth the art and practice of improvisation, as well as some of their shared history in Chryssa Tzelepi & Akis Kersanidis’s In Situ, which streams for free until Sunday on Festivalscope’s public facing platform.

Their ethos is free and experimental, but you can still hear a good deal of structure in the music documented in situ, in In Situ. Thanks to a few practically-underground clubs, like pianist Sakis Papadimitriou’s hole in the wall, the music had an infrastructure to provide gigging and learning opportunities. We hear him in a variety of contexts, including plucking the piano strings in a very outside performance, but going inside during the film’s surprisingly swinging closer.

Tzelepi and Kersanidis introduce us to many colorful figures, including Gianni Lenoci, who also experiments with treated pianos, as well as practicing Butch Morris’s conduction techniques of big band conducting. Drummer Floros Floridas is Papadimitrou’s frequent duo partner, photographer, Aris Georgiou is sort of the Francis Wolff of their scene and graphic designer Dimitris Arvanitis is the Reid Miles.

There are also a couple ringers of note. German drummer Gunther “Baby” Summer is a former East German, who originally discovered jazz through Willis Conover’s Voice of America broadcasts and now regularly collaborates with Greek jazz musicians. He is also quite stylistically flexible—his nickname is a reference to an early hero, New Orleans drummer Baby Dodds. We also see parts of a command performance by Art Ensemble of Chicago veteran Roscoe Mitchell, backed up by many now familiar Greek jazz musicians.

In Situ is a remarkably accessible introduction to free jazz and free improvisation. These musicians are definitely playing outside—and flying high without safety nets—but they never sound abrasive. Even if audiences do not fall in love with what they hear, it should sufficiently stretch out their ears to widen their potential listening spectrum. Frankly, it is a shame this film stands virtually zero chance of securing theatrical distribution in America (seriously, a documentary on Greek free jazz improvisors). Tzelepi and Kersanidis also earn credit showing a bit of style in the way they frame interview sequences, which is a plus. Recommended for anyone interested in adventurous music, In Situ streams free of charge on the civilian Festivalscope until Sunday (3/25), as part of their collection of films from this year’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.

Evil in the Time of Heroes: Billy Zane in Greece

Evidently, Herodotus and Thucydides lied to us, or at least they did not tell us the full truth. Maybe they assumed nobody would have believed them if they chronicled the zombie outbreak that terrorized ancient Athens, but that means the Greek capital will be completely unprepared when thee next zombie apocalypse strikes again two thousand years later. Fortunately, a mysterious immortal has also returned to offer some sage advice in Yorgos Noussias’s Evil in the Time of Heroes (trailer here), which is now available on DVD from Doppelganger Releasing.

Noussias does not waste a lot of time on exposition, but this is a zombie movie, how much backstory do you really need? We might as well just jump right in with Lt. Kleanth Vakirtzis, one of Greece’s last surviving military officers and his rag-tag band of survivors as they run like all get-out from the rampaging zombie hordes. They have just seen poor Argyris die from impalement, but when they take refuge in a flat, they find his doppelganger alive and well. Frankly they find the two Argyrises utterly baffling, but they really do not have time to worry about it.

Major characters die at a faster clip in Heroes than in The Walking Dead. Plus, the clock is ticking on even greater destruction. NATO has set an evacuation deadline, after which they will commence carpet bombing, because so far, the zombie outbreak remains contained within Greece, their most expendable member state. However, the mysterious Prophitis (Billy Zane in a Jedi hoodie-cape) remembers what happened during the first zombie apocalypse and offers up cryptic clues for their ultimate deliverance.

Apparently, Heroes is a prequel to Nousias’s prior zombie outbreak thriller, but it seems so self-contained, it is hard to see where it would link up to the earlier, later film. At times it is also almost feverishly surreal, with scenes resembling Bergman’s Seventh Seal, but with marauding zombies in the background, and the foreground. Noussias probably did not even care that his narrative does not make a heck of a lot of sense. Instead, he allows energy, attitude, and gore to trump logic at every turn.

Even though they are dying like flies, the cast deserves credit for their gameness. Andreas Kontopoulos and Eftyhia Yakoumi forge some appealing romantic chemistry as Lt. Vakirtzis and Maj. Olga, whom he meets in the flat owned by the second Argyris’s father. Meletis Georgiadis and Pepi Moschovakou are also unusually affecting (by zombie flick standards) as the grieving Meletis and his lover Marina.

When Heroes first hit the festival circuit in 2009, it probably gave zombie fans new hope the genre could reinvigorate itself. However, mostly through no fault of its own, it suffers in light of subsequent zombie breakout films and reinventions, particularly Train to Busan and I am a Hero. What was once utter bedlam, now appears a tad restrained, in comparison. Still, when judged on its own bloody insane merits, Heroes is jolly eager to please and raring to make a gory mess. Enthusiastically recommended for fans of zombies and Billy Zane, Evil in the Time of Heroes is now available from Doppelganger Releasing.

Suntan: The Dark Side of Fun in the Mediterranean Sun

Kostis Makridis is the Joel Fleischman of the Greek Isles, except he is much more pathetic. He has accepted a post on a sleepy Cycladic island that only comes alive during the hedonistic summers. Apparently, he has endured some bitter professional and personal disappointments. Frankly, he is probably lucky to have this not so prestigious position, but he will make of hash of it anyway in Argyris Papadimitropoulos’s Suntan (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Makridis makes it through the winter without incident, because there just isn’t anything to do. However, when summer comes so do the half- or fully naked cavorting tourists. On her first day on the island, Anna Anagostou takes a nasty tumble from her bike, requiring Dr. Makridis’s attention—and his attention she will certainly receive. Initially, Anagostou and her young, sexually explorative friends invite the nebbish doctor along when they hit the beaches and the party circuit. Unfortunately, when he starts to take Anagostou too seriously, they drop him like a bad olive. Of course, this just makes him resentful—and increasingly unstable.

Since supposedly every Greek film is supposedly a commentary on the EU-imposed austerity, let us parse out Suntan’s allegorical meanings. Surely, Anagostou and her nubile young friends must represent the temptations of the Euro Zone, while Makridis represents socialist Greece, seduced into renouncing his ability to finance debt through currency devaluations. Or something like that.

What is beyond debating is how uncomfortable it is to witness Makridis’s inevitable implosion. Granted, the heathy bodies on display throughout Suntan would make nearly anyone over thirty feel old, but Makridis is particularly schlubby. Seriously, he is a doctor who chain smokes in this day and age. Granted, this is Greece, but still. Regardless, watching him lose his head and his dignity over Anagostou will make most viewers downright queasy.

Makis Papadimitriou is painfully believable as poor, square Makridis. He follows a predictably humiliating character arc, but he adheres to it with absolute conviction. Likewise, Elli Tringou captures the vivacious energy and cruel capriciousness of the young and beautiful Anagostou. In all honesty, the contrast between them is so great, it is hard to buy into his delusions. Even for a virile boy-toy her own age, about the best he could hope for under the circumstances would be a little action before she left at the end of the season.

Still, there is something awkwardly human about the pining for unattainable beauty. Of course, it never ends well, but Papadimitropoulos and co-screenwriter Syllas Tzoumerkas (who also appears as Makridis’s vastly more successful classmate who just so happens to vacation on the isle) take it to a surprisingly dark place. This subject matter is the stuff of tragic opera—it almost can’t not work, but Suntan never really finds anything new-and-now to say about it. Only just recommended for horndog cineastes who want to see spring break nudity with arthouse credentials, Suntan opens this Friday (3/10) in New York, at the Village East.

LAGFF ’16: Symptom

He looks vaguely Minotaur like, which is appropriate, since he is Greek. However, the only labyrinth is in your head. Don’t worry, the narrative is never crass enough to interfere with the dreamlike vibe of Angelos Frantzis’s Symptom (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Los Angeles Greek Film Festival.

Something awfully tragic must have happened to generate the bad karma plaguing this dark, rainy un-Mykonos-like Greek isle. A mysterious horned figure seems to have the power to drive men mad. Only the solitary, purposeful woman seems immune to his influence. She will try to take charge of the situation, but the rest of the islanders are a rather sad and disorganized lot. Regardless, some sort of confrontation will be inevitable once we deduce the two mystery figures have some shared history buried way back in their pasts.

If Greek cinema makes you think of the arty indulgences of Yorgos Lanthimos and Athina Rachel Tsangari, Symptom is not the film to disabuse you of your stereotypes. This is a murky, standoffish film that prefers give dark portents of horrors to come than stoop to any bourgeoisie genre goings-on. You have your horned man and Sisyphean scenes of the woman struggling to claw her way up a gravelly rock face. All will be hinted at during the late second act flashback, but it would be an exaggeration to say anything is revealed.

By now you should have a general idea how you would respond to spending eighty-seven minutes with Symptom. In all honesty, it will make many viewers nostalgic for Lost Highway, because Lynch’s opaque film at least had some get-up-and-go.

Bear in mind, Frantzis does not even bother with dialogue until the film hits the twenty-minute mark. Considering how little he gives her to work with, Katia Goulioni acquits herself quite well as the mystery woman. Cinematographer Elias Adamis also frames some striking images, but Frantzis’s heavy-handed symbolism quickly grows tiresome. Like Freud said, sometimes a glowing-eyed minotaur is really just a glowing-eyed minotaur. Unless you find Bela Tarr and Apichatpong Weerasethakul excessively commercial, Symptom really isn’t recommended when it screens this Saturday (6/4), as part of the LA Greek Film Festival.

The Pirate: Caviar and Crossbones

For centuries, Greeks have maintained a commanding share of the global shipping business. Arguably, Ioannis Varvakis was part of that tradition. He specialized in re-routing Ottoman shipments. He was a proud pirate, but he became a Russian officer and nobleman, while never relinquishing his Greek identity. Yannis Smaragdis, Greek cinema’s prestigious bio-pic specialist turns his attention to the swashbuckler in his English language production, The Pirate (a.k.a. God Loves Caviar), which releases today on DVD and is available on multiple VOD platforms from Vision Films (trailer here).

The dreaded pirate Varvakis will end up old and infirm, living as a secret captive in a remote British “clinic” for infectious diseases. We know this because the film starts at this cheery point, telling his story in competing flashbacks. Lefentarios a dodgy veteran of the Greek resistance will explain to the British superintendent how he goaded the buccaneer into more direct action, while Varvakis’s former servant will explain to a group of street urchin’s how great his former master truly was.

Varvakis had always fought the Turks ship to ship, claiming the spoils for his efforts. However, at Lefentarios’s urging, Varvakis hatches an unlikely plan to wipe out the entire Ottoman fleet (apparently by setting his ship on fire and pointing towards several hundred Ottoman vessels). Needing safe haven, Varvakis offers his services to Catherine the Great, who appoints Varvakis her personal agent for the Caspian.

The mostly reformed rogue makes decent coin tending to her interests, but he becomes vastly wealthy when he develops methods to ship caviar without spoilage. Russians love caviar. So do the Persians, which lends his operations additional strategic significance. Catherine is well satisfied with Varvakis, bestowing rank and title upon him. Unfortunately, his personal life is a mess.

Frankly, the Greek resistance to the Ottoman occupation is not exactly over exposed in Western media. The Pirate’s home viewing release comes at an opportune time, countering Russell Crowe’s ripping well-made Water Diviner, which views Greco-Turkish conflicts through the lens of Smyrna. However, Smaragdis devotes an awful lot of time to Varvakis’s loveless marriage to the unfaithful Helena, his strained relationship with a grown daughter from a previous union, and the whiny son who can never live up to his father’s expectations.

Even though it is a minor role, John Cleese not surprisingly delivers all the best lines as McCormick, the British administrator. Sebastian Koch (still best known in America for The Lives of Others) has the appropriate presence for a figure of Varvakis’s stature, but despite no shortage of makeup, he never looks like he is the right age for the character’s successive stations in life. In contrast, Evgeniy Stychkin never ages a day as Ivan, the loyal servant who manages to make his way to Varvakis’s double-secret island prison without arousing any suspicion. Of course, Catherine Deneuve does her stateliest as Catherine II, but her screen time is limited.

The Pirate was a big hit domestically, arriving to bolster national spirits in a time of austerity. Tellingly, the Greeks would look to a pirate, who lives off contraband appropriated from others, as a source of inspiration. Still, there is something appealingly old school about its earnest approach to historical drama. You can practically hear the voiceovers announcing “special guest stars” Cleese and Deneuve. Recommended for those looking for some unselfconscious, slightly creaky, throwback entertainment, The Pirate (a.k.a. God Loves Caviar) is now available on DVD, as well as on VOD services like iTunes, DirecTV, and Vudu.

Tribeca ’15: Wednesday 04:45

Stelios Dimitrakopoulos is a jazz club owner in Greece. It should therefore come as no surprise to learn he is a terrible businessman. With his debt to a Romanian gangster about to come due, Dimitrakopoulos will scramble to find a way to save his club while also fulfilling his more mundane responsibilities in Alexis Alexiou’s Wednesday 04:45 (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

Dimitrakopoulos has great taste when it comes to identifying emerging Balkan jazz talent, but he is not so hot at the rest of club management. Through Vassos, an old crony-gone-more-crooked, Dimitrakopoulos arranged a loan from “the Romanian.” Naturally, he cannot pay, so he passively agrees to sign over his club. Being Greece, this turns out to be quite a complicated process. In his dealings with Vassos, Dimitrakopoulos crosses paths with Omar, an Albanian who also owes money to the Romanian. However, Omar is not so accepting of the situation.

Eventually, high tempers and deep debts lead to violence. It all rather baffles Dimitrakopoulos as he tries to run his more workaday errands. Of course, it is just a matter of time before the bedlam completely engulfs him.

Alexiou practically screams at the audience, it is all about the austerity program. However, German and American audiences might have trouble ginning up either sympathy or outrage for Dimitrakopoulos’s plight. Not to defend loan sharks, but generally speaking, it is understood when someone borrows money they will eventually have to pay it back, with some sort of interest. Dimitrakopoulos seems to understand this only slightly better than the Greek government. Frankly, considering who he is in hock to, he is getting off quite easy.

Nevertheless, Alexiou’s noir style and thriller mechanics are quite strong. The Athens backdrop gives it an almost postindustrial-dystopian-noir ambiance, sort of like Godard’s Alphaville, but more neon. Cinematographer Christos Karamanis makes the rain-glistening streets and hazy nocturnal club scenes look great, in a genre appropriate way. The acts Dimitrakopoulos books also sound quite intriguing based on snippets we get to hear.

As Dimitrakopoulos, Stelios Mainas is a droopy-eyed middle-aged anti-hero in the Jean Reno tradition. He looks the part as he steadily ratchets up Dimitrakopoulos’s resentment-stoked intensity. In some ways, 04:45 compares to Schumacher’s Falling Down, at least until Alexiou unleashes his inner Johnnie To with a storm-drenched rooftop confrontation. Altogether, it is a distinctive thriller. Recommended for noir fans who do not consider the Regal Battery Park prohibitively inconvenient, Wednesday 04:45 screens again tonight (4/21), as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Fantastic Fest ’14: Norway

Zano is the worst sort of over the hill hipster. He is a vampire. Technically, he is not getting any older, but he is still not maturing much either. Yet, he somehow comes across rather world weary and sad. Much to his own surprise, Zano will learn even he has an ethical line he will not cross in Yannis Veslemes’ feverishly odd Norway (trailer here), which screens sometime during the 2014 Fantastic Festival.

It is 1984 and disco still rules Athens’ nightclubs. Zano has come for some hedonism, but he cannot connect with the mortician friend who is supposed to be his host. Making his way to a low-rent discotheque, Zano drinks, dances, and strikes out with live-bodied women he puts the moves on. In the process, he crosses paths with a former actor-turned gangster and a fellow vampire who looks even sicklier than he does. However, things really get complicated when he meets Alice, an earthly party girl, who is also a bit of a predator herself.

Frankly, they have a rather awkward introduction, considering the way Zano chomps down on the neck of her Norwegian drug dealer, Peter. Yet, somehow they both go off into the night together, pulling along the zombie-like Peter as he undergoes the undead transformation. It seems Zano will eventually get what he wants from Alice, but he suspects she might be have a secret agenda, which of course she does.

It is hard to believe Norway and popular franchises like Twilight, True Blood, and Vampire Diaries share any sort of kinship, despite their common ostensible subject of vampires. From the trance-inducing music to the hazy ultra-1980s cinematography, Norway is more of a contact-buzz than a proper horror film. There is no denying the stylishness of Veslemes’ approach, particularly his undisguised use of model trains during Zano’s travel sequences. Cinematography Christos Karamanis gives it all an unusually striking look that evokes classic film noir and vintage comic art.

Yet, probably Veslemes’ most bizarre ingredient is the scruffy hound dog Vangelis Mourikis, head-bobbing his way through the film as Zano. Somehow Mourikis and Veslemes successfully walk a fine line, making their protagonist vampire a total loon, but not so far out there we can’t relate to him on some hard to define level.

This is the sort of film that will have you thinking to yourself “this is so weird” from start to finish. Arguably, the plot is not so over-the-top when compared to other genre films (although it takes a seriously outrageous turn), but it is just executed in such a distinctively whacked-out (but mostly accessible) manner. In fact, the vibe is so overpowering, viewers might not fully realize how strangely good Mourikis is. Highly recommended for adventurous genre fans, Norway will screen sometime during this year’s Fantastic Fest, running through this coming Thursday (9/25) in Austin, Texas.

Sundance ’13: The Capsule (short)

There are plenty of fantastical happenings in this girls’ finishing school, but it certainly is no Hogwarts.  Clémence Poésy’s Harry Potter fans will not know what to make of it.  Part fashion show, part art installation, but entirely experimental cinema, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s The Capsule screens as part of the New Frontiers Shorts Program at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Six young women have arrived in mysterious ways at an ancient coastal villa for metaphysical instructions on becoming women.  This naturally includes music classes and lessons on how to look elegant while walking your goat.  Narrative is decidedly slippery here, but it is definitely inspired by Sisyphus, Prometheus, and Sappho, as well as the art of co-writer Aleksandra Waliszewska.

For part-time cover-waif Poésy and her co-stars, The Capsule is as much a modeling assignment as it is an acting gig. The costumes by leading designers, including the only mildly fetishistic school uniforms, are quite striking, but the faded glory of the villa and exotic surrounding environs are Capsule’s strongest asset.  However, the super-imposed animation would not have cut it on MTV’s Liquid Television back in the day.

 

Expressly intended for adventurous viewers, the thirty-five minute Capsule is nonetheless unusually stylish by experimental standards.  Cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis gives it all a cool, glossy sheen appropriate to its neo-gothic austerity.  Recommended for New Frontiers track veterans and uncommonly hardy fashonistas, The Capsule screens as part the NF shorts block at this year’s Sundance.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Alps

The spirit of enterprise is not completely dead in Greece.  It just manifests itself self in peculiarly dark ways.  A nameless quartet has joined forces to provide a strange service.  They act as stand-ins for recently deceased loved ones.  However, matters get decidedly complicated when one member starts freelancing in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Alps (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

They call themselves “Alps,” because those mountains often substitute for other ranges in films and TV.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say their leader, “Mount Blanc,” calls them Alps.  He is definitely the one running a show.  Mount Blanc the paramedic and his nurse colleague are obviously well placed to prospect for new clients.  Mount Blanc thinks the parents of a teenaged tennis player not expected to survive an auto accident look like promising candidates, but the nurse decides she wants to take them on solo. 

This is a clear violation of the Alps’ rules.  It also hardly seems practical. The student gymnast (Alps member #3) would be a much better surrogate for the couples’ daughter.  Yet, nobody seems to worry about resemblances or even rudimentary acting ability when employing the troupe.  Simply having a warm body in place of the late family member is apparently sufficient.  Just how well did these people know their dearly beloved?  This is an especially apt question for the couple the nurse hijacks, given the not so subtle clues we are given regarding their relationship with their daughter.

Of course, there are not a lot of healthy relationships in Alps, whether it is the less than encouraging coach (Alps member #4) imperiously overseeing the gymnast’s training, or the increasingly erratic nurse, whose inappropriate overtures to her father he sternly rebukes.  Clearly, Lanthimos will spare the audience little.

Alps is one of those densely compacted films that rather asks for excessive interpretation.  Yes, the line between role-playing and self-delusion can be slippery and identity is a persistently problematic notion.  Nonetheless, sometimes a cigar is really a cigar and not a class conscious statement on Euro-austerity.  In a way, Alps is somewhat akin to David Lynch at his most indulgent, but even Lost Highway gave viewers the trappings of a genre picture to hold onto.  Instead, Alps is mostly a series of uncomfortable episodes, ostensibly rife with significance, produced with an oppressively institutional color palette.

The auteur responsible for the Oscar-nominated Dogtooth, Lanthimos is a filmmaker with a burgeoning international reputation, whose work has to be taken into account by anyone seriously following the world cinema scene.  Still, that does not make Alps anymore fun to watch.  A coldly detached detour into a postmodern blind alley, Alps never makes good on the promise of its legitimately intriguing premise.  Recommended exclusively for Lanthimos’ stalwart champions, Alps opens today (7/13) in New York at the Cinema Village.

Greek Cinema: A Touch of Spice

It is a cliché to say you can’t go home again, but for Greeks expelled from Turkey in 1964, it is undoubtedly a trickier proposition. Coming back to Istanbul proves particularly painful for Fanis Iakovides, the astronomer protagonist of Tassos Boulmetis’s sweeping culinary family drama A Touch of Spice (trailer here), which opens theatrically in New York today.

Iakovides knows about two things, cooking and astronomy, because of seeds sown by his grandfather Vassilis during his formative years. Yet he has not seen his grandfather, a respected Turkish citizen, since the rest of the family was forced to leave the country. Every time Vassilis plans to visit Greece, some pretext crops up to cancel his trip. Just when Iakovides expects his grandfather will finally arrive in Greece, word comes that the old man has been hospitalized. Now it is the astronomer who will make a trip he has long avoided, back to Istanbul.

Spice follows in the tradition of food-as-metaphor films, some of which have been very good (Babette’s Feast, Eat Drink Man Woman) and some not so great (Chocolat). In this case, each segment of Boulmetis’s film corresponds to the course of a meal. During “appetizers” we see the family’s life in Turkey before the expulsion. “Main Course” corresponds to the tumultuous events of the mid-1960’s, both for the transplanted Iakovides and the country of Greece. During “Desert,” Fanis the astronomer finally makes his bittersweet homecoming.

In truth, the food motifs are sometimes a bit overdone, as when great meaning is invested in the fact that the word “astronomy” is contained in the term “gastronomy.” However, the story of Fanis Iakovides is compelling enough to work with a few overcooked side-dishes.

The heart of the film is the relationship between Iakovides and his lost childhood love Saime. Spice shows how outside events can disrupt the lives of average people, repeatedly sabotaging their hopes for romance. George Corraface, the French-born Greek actor perhaps best known to American audiences for the title role in 1992’s Christopher Columbus, is excellent as the adult Fanis. As Saime, Basak Köklükaya displays a genuine warmth and grace that makes his enduring love quite believable. They show legitimate screen chemistry in their brief scenes together and frustratingly look like a perfect couple, which is why their story works so well in Spice.

At its best, Spice is a moving portrait of regret, precipitated by events well beyond anyone’s control. The food looks great, but the central love story and the sensitive performances of Corraface and Köklükaya are the real meat and potatoes of the film. It opens today in New York at the Cinema Village.