Chevalier

Divers return with their catch to a mega-yacht at anchor in the Saronikos Sea. These guys have riches, leisure, health and care-free lives. With this much testosterone in a confined space there is bound to be trouble. It comes in the form of a contest to determine who the best is at everything. The winner is awarded a trophy ring from the others. It doesn't take long for each paragon of machismo to morph into a man-child.

The men grade each other on skills, assets and accomplishments including such things as posture, teeth, cooking, politeness, virility, underwear and how quickly they can put together a shelf. Points are taken away for rudeness, bad singing, snoring or drooling in your sleep. The film began with so much promise. The location was fantastic, the theme was intriguing and the characters were interesting. It all was fabulous in the beginning. It just didn't come together very well or maintain its sway. The acting, scenery, depth, story and editing collapsed toward the end. Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival 2015.

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.

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.

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.

The so called "Greek Weird Wave" returns with another entry, this time a comedy directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari (best known for ''Attenberg"). The co-writer of "Dogtooth" and "The Lobster" Filippou assists her efforts to make an unconventionally funny and somewhat disturbing comedy. As the jury in London Film Festival (Best Film award for the movie there) stated "Chevalier is a study of male antagonism seen through the eyes of a brave and original filmmaker. With great formal rigour and irresistible wit, Athina Rachel Tsangari has managed to make a film that is both a hilarious comedy and a deeply disturbing statement on the condition of western humanity". Well, that's accurate but the formal rigour in all (post)modern Greek movies is getting a bit tiring and the movie is a funny comedy but not really a hilarious one. Yet the film is probably a bit better that George Lanthimos' uneven last entry "The Lobster". So if you are a Greek Weird Wave fan you should check it out and a few good laughs are guaranteed.

Grade: B-