Nacktbaden - Manche bräunen, andere brennen

I have to say that I really enjoyed the way this film unfolded. And it seldom happens watching movies anymore, lately scenarios are predictable and repetitive, this one is none of these. The director did a superb job in building up his characters. The movie's main theme shows how desire can blind you to the point that you have no self awareness, where the central character becomes hypnotized and losses all sense of his dignity and humanity. Makis Papadimitriou who plays a single, unloved solitary man in his 50'sis, does a superb job. He is an older man who falls madly in love and although at times he had to be excessive, his acting was realistic and left me suffocating, wanting to get into the screen to stop him. The cinematography was amazing, set in a sleepy sandy little Greek island, a paradise, a place that we would all want to fall in love.

It is the kind of movies that makes you think that the absence of nudity would make it even more clear that it is not a good picture in terms of narration, acting, direction, plot- because especially in Greece people tent to take this as a criterion. After the first 15 minutes of the movie you can clearly see the intention of the story as a whole. The acting of the main characters is way too obvious and gives you the impression that you just don't need to think on your own about their purposes etc, pushing you on having no questions about their intentions, creating suspense for noone but the characters of the movie and distancing the viewer as the greek tv shows do. It's bad to consider that movies like this form the so called "greek cinema". Probably first draft story. Makis papadimitriou and Eleni Triggou are good actors but in this movie seemed like they were totally left alone.

Kostis, a glum, middle-aged doctor, arrives with his pot-belly and receding hairline on a small Greek island to run the local clinic. It is winter and the island feels quiet and isolated - conversation for Kostis consists mainly of the local ageing Lothario promising him a United Nations of 'pussy' when the tourist season starts. Sure enough, summer brings with it hordes of tourists, and Kostis falls in with a group of twentysomethings who, when they are not partying hard in the local nightclubs, spend their time on the clothing-optional beach. They are all sleek and lovely (excepting one particularly horrendous beard) and among them Kostis sticks out like a sore thumb, but they tolerate him until he starts to drink increasingly heavily and ignore his duties at the clinic, indicating he is not as amusingly harmless as he at first appeared.

Efthymis Papadimitriou turns in a good performance, portraying well both Kostis' pathetic eagerness to please the youngsters and providing a nice line in staring-eyed obsessiveness. He is also brave, offering to the camera his doughy, hairy body which is in marked contrast to the tanned firmness of the younger actors. The other characters - both tourists and locals - are all pretty much two-dimensional stereotypes, with the exception of Anna, young leader of the group and object of Kostis' admiration. Elli Triggou manages to make her not too obnoxious.

As soon as Kostis finds happiness with the group, movie law dictates that things are not going to end well and in that the film is entirely predictable - and I found that waiting for the inevitable embarrassment to happen distracted me from the rest of the film. So I am not sure I would bother to watch it again, but it was worth seeing once.

Would have been perfect with a better and more realistic ending

I was not preparing for something serious after the first 10-15 minutes of the film; after which my wife left the room, offended by the nudity. We are both Greek-born and were used to the old ways, though we were quite aware of what modernism has brought to Greek beaches. But the movie was not about nudity. It was the drama of a middle-aged man who had not tasted the joys of life, being glum and relatively ordinary. But a young Aphrodite partying with her friends caught his attention. The movie relentlessly follows his obsession, and if Nabokov invented Lolita, this story gets more intense. I would say the Greeks have learned something about tragedy. I was dazzled by the excellent photography and the gorgeous Greek island. Not an absolute masterpiece but close to one.