Attenberg (2012)

Athina Rachel Tsangari's "Attenberg" doesn't present the most positive image of Greece. The focus is a pair of friends in a mining town. The main girl is watching her father die, and her only real pleasure is watching David Attenborough's wildlife documentaries, in addition to the sex education given to her by her friend.The movie itself was pretty slow and seemed to have little other purpose except to show these girls in a grim existence. But at the same time it gives one a sense of life in the Hellenic Republic. Once the land that gave the world philosophy, it's now the Third World of Europe. The historic sites are surrounded by crumbling sidewalks and people missing teeth. It's no accident that Greece has been probably the single country most affected by Europe's economic mess. As the main girl's father puts it: "We went from sheep to bulldozers." Anyway, it's not any kind of great movie, but it does give one an idea of the status quo in Greece.

This film has two great flaws: lack of a central plot and dispassionate characters (not performances). The protagonist of Marina is not only asexual, she is completely unemotional, even around her father and her supposed best (and only) friend. There is neither joy nor tragedy, only complete indifference to everything that happens. Occasionally you get an interesting remark about how Greece skipped modernity, but that is not really enough to make it interesting or thoughtful. Even during her sex scene, Marina keeps talking trivia non-stop during the first half, then is quiet as a mouse during the second half. I have never met or even seen people this deprived of emotion, so I cannot relate in any meaningful way to it.In short, this is the kind of film that most people will get bored with quickly, then get told by somebody else why they are supposed to like it. Symbolism really only works when it is sufficiently obvious to all. In my opinion, this should never have been nominated for any awards, much less won them. If you know somebody that stares blankly with no emotion when he/she is with friends, having sex, and when their father dies, then maybe you can relate to this film more than I did. If you don't, well, there are much better Greek films out there.

If there is any one character that this movie really pushes one to identify with, it must be Spyros. The dying man is there for the ride, and so are we, the ones unfortunate enough to have sat throughout this static disjointed mess. Tsangari manages to pull a sick joke on viewers by pretending that this movie is about "sex, death and life in between". This movie is a preposterously pretentious collage of thoroughly insipid scenes, fit for a post-lobotomy day-long blank staring session. I found the movie utterly unenjoyable, and its parallel to real-life documentaries revolting and absurd, seeing as how Attenborough manages to be a lot closer to his animals than this confounded director ever was to her actors. Tsangari is so adept at chasing the last traces of sincere expression out of the actors' performances that I feel like there was more humanity and life in the few shots of gorillas than there was from the entire cast of this excruciatingly dry film. The only memorable thing about this movie is how many yawns one could squeeze into 90 minutes. If you want a good (and recent) piece of Greek cinema, try Kynodontas (incidentally, Tsangari was an associate producer of that film, but hew role was probably small enough not to ruin what is a masterpiece of modern Greek cinema, unlike this unpalatable bunk).

According to one of the main characters, Greece is a country which has moved from keeping sheep to IT, without passing industrialism. And this is not the Greece you see in postcards. It's post modernism in an ugly shape, the remains of an overrated 20th century.One of the girls here is 23 years old and has always rejected both sex and love. Her female friend is on the other hand very experienced. Their relationship is somewhat cold, although finds expression in their dancing together in a yard.A father and architect dies, not any longer believing in his 1900s. The 23-year-old girl almost talks a relation with a man into pieces. This is a form experiment, but it's not that successful. But it very much rejects that old bad century.