Suntan

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.

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.

Argyris Papadimitropoulos' film 'Suntan' tells an unfortunately familliar and painful story: someone flirts, whether for good or bad reasons, with a lonely person; and that person responds with undue seriousness. The film's problems lies less in the fact that it's not exactly cheerful, but more in the fact that it's not really convincing. The central character is a doctor, but his personal decorum is quite unlike that of any doctor I've ever known; quite why a girl takes even a passing interest in him is unclear; and how he can deceive himself that things are ever going well as he tries to integrate into her crowd is also unclear. It's not that humans aren't capable of telling themselves stories, particularly where sex is concerned, but a story needs a seed, and this one seems to grow out of nothing. The resulting tregedy is thus not just painful to watch, but also a little bizarre.

This film is not a nudist film, nor will the nudist culture embrace it because of it's dark turn in the last act.

But it's exactly what a nudist film needs to be. Honest, unflinching, raw. This is an examination of what every American Nudist goes through. (to use the title of a failed film I was forced to make).

We middle-aged nudists have to come to terms with millennials calling themselves Young Naturists, who are rewriting the rules of nudist etiquette. And while they thrive, embracing the "new hedonism" which actually is pretty mild, and naturally, beautiful realized in this film, older nude beach goers like our hero Kostis feel like a relic, who no longer fit in with the younger crowd no matter how hard they try to hang on to romantic notions of love.

Kostis, a pathetic romantic fool, ends up like every unattractive romantic fool, neglecting his professional duties and spiraling downward in some misguided attempt to recapture something he never had.

And it can only end tragically. Because ultimately, romance is selfish. Romantics are self absorbed egomaniacs who are unable to see the world as it truly is. And romantic naturists are the worst offenders.

That being said, there are some weaker moments, Some scenes are repetitive and the fight choreography was awful. I was hoping it'd be even more violent, but that's my American attitude showing.

Overall, I highly recommend this film because it's the direction that any indie filmmaker interested in using nudity in their art should go. It's bold, daring and immediately relevant to our lifestyle.

Would have been perfect with a better and more realistic ending