Share
Visit Us
email us
The third Greek International Film Festival Tour of Canada is in full swing showcasing 52 films in 11 cities across the country. Stan Papulkas has put the festival together again and it must be judged a huge organizational and cinematic success in promoting Greek culture.
Here are some comments about three films that I saw on October 2, 2023, at Innis College in Toronto in the order that I saw them:
GREEK PHILOSOPHIA AND CHICKENS
Greek Philosophia is like walking on the beach or in the desert and coming across a gem. It is a gorgeous short film that is funny, moving, maybe even romantic. It is about a successful and apparently well-off writer who wants to commit suicide.
Tessa Knight (Germaine Gaudet) is an attractive woman, living in a well-appointed apartment and she is the winner of the Best Romantic Writer of the Decade Award. She is well into middle age and goes to a deserted stretch of beach on the coast of California and meets Keith (Brian D. Cohen), gives him money and an heirloom gun and asks him to shoot her. We are startled, of course, but she is dealing with a professional killer who approaches the job coolly but is surprised that someone like Tessa would ask to be killed.
The killing is postponed and Tessa goes to a Greek restaurant where she meets Katina (Lainie Kazan) and her son Niko (Lukas Hassel). Katina is a life force as she expounds her ideas about living and loving. She touches something in Tessa. Tessa goes back to the beach and hands the gun to the assassin and is ready to die.
I will not disclose the end of the film but it is beautifully done with Gaudet, Cohen, Hassel and Kazan giving marvellous performances. Aimiende Negbenebor Sela directs with sensitivity the script by Despina Moraitu Politzi and the film, I repeat, is a short gem.
I LOVE GREECE
Unless one is watching a travelogue produced by the Greek Tourism Organization, you would assume that the title I Love Greece is meant ironically. You would be right.
The film takes place in Greece but it involves Franco-Greeks and most of the dialogue is in French with English sub-titles, of course. A young Frenchman, Jean (Vincent Dedienne) and his Greek wife Marina (Stacy Martin) go to Greece and meet her family. There is a funeral of a cousin that they must attend and a wedding on a Greek island. Marina’s parents Aristidis (Stelios Mainas) and Maro (Vanna Karamaounas) and the rest of the extended family all go to the island. The accommodation turns out to be a shack that may be suitable for 2 people and the swimming pool has no water.
Jean has professional and financial problems and his relationship with Marina has soured. The tension between them becomes exacerbated when they go on a boat for a romantic cruise and are stranded when they run out of gas. The tension among the family members becomes explosive and reaches the breaking point.
The film contains some spectacular views of the sea and the island, some humour and a close view of Greece’s financial crisis which forms the backdrop of the movie. What appears like a happy family proves to be seriously dysfunctional where even Maro, the dutiful and obedient wife rebels against the domineering husband.
The film is directed by Nafsika Guerry-Karamaounas and written by her and Chloé Larouchi. In their attempt to bring in the financial crisis and the business difficulties of some, they complicate the issues and fail to develop the themes and characters of the film sufficiently. Otherwise, it is a reasonably good film.
DIGNITY
Dignity, written and directed by Dimitris Katsimiris, is a powerful and emotionally gripping film about a family that must decide the fate of their father. Dimitris (Charis Tsitsakis) is “celebrating” his eightieth birthday and his three children are ostensibly celebrating the occasion. In fact, Dimitris has just had a stroke and is unable to speak or communicate with his family. They put a cake with two candles in front of him and he blows them out with great difficulty. He is out of it.
Dimitris is a widower living with his son Manolis (Thanasis Chalkias) and his wife Eleni (Ilektra Gennata). They live in a small, almost claustrophobic apartment where all the action takes place. Manolis’s coffee shop is doing badly.
By contrast, Manolis’s sister Sofia (Marouska Panagiotopoulou) and her husband (Yorgos Geronemakis) are well-off world travellers and bring an expensive bottle of wine. Dimitris’s youngest son Alexis (Giannis Kotsifas) looks like the black sheep of the family. He lives by gambling and is constantly on the phone. Who is he talking to and about what?
The gathering is not for the siblings to see each other or to celebrate Dimitris’ birthday. It is to decide what to do with him. Is he to be sent to a nursing home or some such institution or is one of his children prepared to look after him.
Eleni and Manolis quickly make it clear that they are not prepared to look after the old man. They have a pile of excuses but the upshot is that they will not take him under any circumstances. Sofia can’t, much as she wants to because they travel all the time, you see. Emotions rise quickly to high pitch levels with excuses flying back and forth until Alexis announces that he will look after his father. Derisive laughter comes from his siblings. The emotional temperature reaches a boiling point as they all scream and scoff without anyone coming up with a solution except for Alexis’ insistence.
The situation boils over into a physical episode when Manolis announces that his father signed the family home in the village to him and he plans to go and live there. It is a wrenching climax as the self-interest and selfishness of Manolis and Sofia are laid bare against Alexiis’ expression of filial duty.
The movie is shot with a hand-held camera in the small apartment and this intensifies the conflict and emotional level of the people involved. In the end they decide to ask Dimitris for his preference and I will not disclose the final scene of the movie.
For more information about the Greek International Film Festival
Tour of Canada and the films shown visit www.gifft.ca
