I'm a Greek-speaker (mother-tongue) but not ethnically Greek. So while I can follow these movies quite easily, I come to them with a non-Greek critical eye. I'm not romantically attached to Greece but have much lifetime experience there, as a Western-educated Easterner.
I'm saying all this because I have great difficulty making sense of Greek-film making. Greeks are not stupid by any means. However, the events of the last generation (EU, then Crisis) have marked them perhaps definitively.
This movie is not a bad movie. It has a very worthy, social-commentary type of subject. It's about horses and horse competition, equestrian events.
The dialogues aren't bad...and the acting is reasonably OK. But it seems to me, like with so many other Greek screen productions I've watched...and walked away from, there is an X factor missing. I've been wondering about this for quite a long time. I think Greek movies esp. lack dynamism. It's as if, as with this one, the actors essentially sleepwalk through the scenes, only coming alive when there is an argument scene to be played out. I'm not the first to complain that Greek movies have too much arguing and shouting. This movie isn't the worst on that score by any means, and it has a lot of sympathy for horses.
But there is no dynamism, no drive no real energy that makes me want to watch it all the way through. Greek movies/TV series rarely grip the audience. It seems to me they are more of a social/psychological salve for a troubled culture, or an expression of anger against the present insanity.
I'm really trying to like this movie, but fighting a losing battle. I think 6 out of 10 is more for effort at making an original movie than for the result.
IMHO, the number of really well-made entertaining Greek screen productions do not exceed 10, over the last 80 yrs. Esp. over the last 50. Many Greek commentators have also mentioned this kind of paucity. The 50s were OK, but from 1960s onwards, they descended. This was made in 2011. It's watchable enough for a Greek movie if one has nothing better to do, or one is desperate for Greek entertainment of a reasonably intelligent nature, but I wouldn't get the DVD if there were one or pay at the cinema.
I would walk away from it...and instantly forget it. The actors do their best, but the energy just isn't there. As with the rest of Greece, sleepwalking on life-support. Art mirrors life.
