Greek Weird Wave films are existential with a hefty dose of absurdism, surrealism and tragedy, where alienated protagonists struggle in a meaningless milieu.
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Aris Servetalis in Christos Nikou s unsettling directorial debut, Apples
Credit: Bartosz Swiniarski
Dir: Christos Nikou. Starring: Aris Servetalis, Sofia Georgovassili, Anna Kalaitzidou, Argyris Bakirtzis, Kostas Laskos. 12A cert, 91 mins
“The Greek Weird Wave” is the favoured catch-all term for the country’s arthouse offerings, thanks to a series of films that apply a zonked aesthetic to their far-out conceits. In the process, humanity is usually made to look lost and sad. It all started with Dogtooth (2009), about a psychotic form of home schooling, which was deeply funny and traumatically disturbing – from there, the feted career of Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite) sprang.
Amid a global pandemic that sparks sudden amnesia, Aris (Aris Servetalis) is enrolled in a recovery programme designed to give blank people new identities. Armed with a Polaroid camera, Aris is tasked with creating and documenting fresh memories, a project that becomes complicated when he meets fellow patient Anna (Sofia Georgovassili).
by Ian Freer |
11 hours ago
Apples starts as it means to go on. Close-ups of a banal house interior are cut to the beat of a dull, steady drumbeat. The noise, it turns out, is a man, Aris (Aris Servetalis), rhythmically banging his head on a door jamb, oblivious to any pain. It’s an oddball note that Christos Nikou’s film not only runs with but amplifies, delivering a deadpan but weirdly moving treatise on the relationship between memory, identity and grief. Nikou, an assistant director on Richard Linklater’s