Suntan

I have been watching Greek cinema since 2009. This is the best Greek film I have watched since then. Also is the best film of Argyris Papadimitropoulos.

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.

First, sorry for my poor English.

This is one of the most… real movies I have ever seen, the acting is awesome, it's so good that I don't know if the actors are not just ordinary guys and girls been themselves.

They say the perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing else to remove, and I think this movie is all about that, straight and honest like life, nothing redundant. The one thing that can be improved is the soundtrack, something more like Chambao would be great but overall good job even on this matter.

If you ever been in love and ever been heartbroken… if you ever been alive you'll love that movie, really love it, you'll hate it and love it at the same time.

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 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.