Chevalier

The film is about a bunch of men overtly engaging in comparing their status and worth. This sounds as comedic a premise as any, but the director is quite restrained and doles out the funnies in a languid tempo (although there is certainly a climax to the proceedings). The writing is very good, and takes care to provide details that deftly flesh out the characters: these are not rah-rah bros, the relationships among them are subtle and fuel much of the action. The actors are quite brilliant, always shy of hamming it up, perhaps tellingly so.

This is what I found most impressive about the film, the sense of director's control of the material. You could milk this premise for a lot of cheap laughs, but the film feels free to go broad or subtle, just hint at hilarious episodes, take the time to enjoy the view from the boat, linger a while at the harbour before going back home. At all times however the perspective is assured, the characters are never made fun of, and the viewer is invited to witness as much silliness as they like.

I am docking a bunch of points because all this restraint on balance does gets a bit draining, but I think that everyone will enjoy the time spent at the company of these gentlemen.

Chevalier is the tale of six men on a fishing trip who decide to begin a competition to determine who among them is "the best in general". What begins as a harmless game begins to get to each character in different ways as they start worrying about their own faults as well as others'.

What struck me most about this movie is how they managed to balance the surreal humour (similar to The Lobster and Dogtooth also co-written by Efthymis Filippou) with a more realistic vibe. What really works is how you actually sort of understand how things could escalate in such a ridiculous way as soon as the ego is brought into it, and you believe in the characters as real people with real motivations.

It also appears to have a warm heart beating under the surface, with several touching moments between the companions and a great sense of camaraderie, despite the fact that they're all desperate to win.

I watched this film in a small cinema with around 50 other people packed in, and throughout the film was none stop laughter.

Part surreal buddy comedy, part satire of the human condition, well worth checking out.

This is a slow burner. A very weird slow burner. I'm not sure, maybe it's a Greek thing, but it's a little hard to get into. It's pretty good though. Unnerving and darkly comic. Six men on a luxury yacht devise a game one evening, a game to decide who is 'the best in general'*. It's an odd idea that sees them testing each other in increasingly bizarre and personal ways. For a game it feels very serious, the men becoming more and more calculated, even cruel and manipulative. I don't know any of the actors but they all do a great job in portraying the tension they're under and pushing that on to the viewer, which makes it very stressful! A fairly damning appraisal of the male ego and their eagerness to take part in character assassination. 6/10 *this may have got a little lost in translation.

Whoever thought this was good comedy material may need to think about other ways of making a living. The combination of writer, Efthymis Filipou and director Athina Rachel Tsangari (also co-writer) proves to be far from satisfying - other than for the easily pleased. How many times have we seen this stale scenario played out on stage and screen – a group of middle aged 'buddies' away on a luxury fishing trip who, begin to become bored with each other's company and decide to find ways of 'entertaining' themselves at each other's expense. The hapless viewer knows the superficial direction this is taking within minutes of playtime IE; Who of them is the best, the biggest, the most successful, the most, etc, etc,....absolutely nothing new here, in fact, it's all presented in a lack-lustre derogatory formula that drags on far too long.

Only self-congratulatory festival critics could rave on so about works of this caliber. If you're inclined to follow the trending rants of Sundance and other world film festivals you might have a chance staying awake through this lame offering. Either the director or cinematographer or both, waste the settings and situations with boring in-focus-out-of-focus on deck exercise machine discussions, not once but twice, as if they have just discovered the use of photographic depth of field. The cast of handpicked performers try to inject life into old situations but are doomed to morose failure by a suss script and heavy-handed direction. If this is supposed to be an intellectual character study then it sure needs a lot of explaining.

While some of the soundtrack music selections are good within themselves, they just don't suit the story. I have no trouble believing the comments made by the reviewer from the Netherlands who wrote; "The cinema they attended was packed for the beginning and half empty by the mid-way point" - the viewers voted with their feet. Only on SBS and the trash-fest of World Movies would you find this 'entertainment' non-event. Sorry Greece, if this is regarded as one of your years best you may have a problem.

This film has the six men on a diving and fishing trip in the Greek islands (accompanied by three, later two, staff on the boat) getting into a competition game about finding out who is the "best in general" among them. While they do some specific competitions, in principle all their behavior down to the tiniest detail is up for rating by the others. We see them taking notes about each other all the time, and most conversations somehow circle around their game; but because the game involves everything, whatever they talk about is by definition part of the game. Besides the interactions and communication, we get some very well done cinematography both of the wonderful setting and the men and their boat that at times can be read as comment on what goes on between them.

The idea of the film is original and fascinating, and the comedy and more serious aspects here work very well together. This is one of the films where humour comes from precise observation of the characteristics and psychology of the protagonists, their conflicts, and from realizing how ridiculous human interaction can be, while at the same time trying to be credible and even deep (different viewers may have different ideas about how realistic and credible all this is but my life experience doesn't make it seem all too outlandish; certainly the temptation of rating and competition on just about anything is very familiar to me).

The film can make you think about competition, masculinity, the obsession of the postmodern society with quantification and rating and its impact, what "criteria" one can think of to rate a person, the role of sexuality, how different protagonists take different aspects of the game seriously, how hard it is to stay outside when things become really tense, and the meaning of the impact the game has on the boat staff.

My quibble with the realism of all this is probably that irony and sarcasm are largely left to the director and the audience but are in critically short supply among the protagonists (which is a problem in many films; from the distance of a director's chair it seems to be very difficult to imagine how people are at times able to observe an ironical distance from themselves). I can in fact easily imagine things to become as tense as they do in the film, but I'd expect the men to at least attempt/pretend to take things in a more light and bantery manner while they get there; although there's obviously a comic effect for the audience in their seriousness.

Apart from this I was fine with the acting, and I had certainly enough to laugh, given that the film has plenty of qualities apart from humour. This is a pretty good and (as far as I know) unique film and I recommend it to everyone who likes the combination of wit, psychology and food for thought that we get here.

This is my first review and already I find myself dithering about whether I should rate this 8 or 9, I say 8.5 rounded up.