vardaxis

The film was made with the help of six adorable piglets and 23,500 doughnuts. The piglets survived; however, many of the doughnuts were eaten during the making of this movie. The cast is well chosen and Pavlos Haikalis, especially plays a very difficult role well. The leads are likable and handle the comedy well, while many of the supporting actors enjoy the excesses of the script with gusto. Olga Malea seems to be able to balance the slapstick with the pathos, and some scenes get a belly laugh, while in the same breath one finds one's heartstrings tugged.

The cinematography is gorgeous and many of the scenes display the beauty of springtime in rural Greece wonderfully. If also found some innovative camera work in the way that some scenes were handled. Small town life in provincial Greece is brought to life successfully and there is a wry commentary on modern-day mores and technology, and how these impinge on traditional attitudes and strait-laced cultural icons.

A very good movie, see it if you can, not only for the laughs, but also for an excellent consideration of some very "heavy" material that confronts us in an unexpected way and challenges our comfort zone. As far as the piglet and where it fits into the story, you'll have to watch the film and find out, its role is crucial!

A successful lawyer decides to escape from the constraints of her family and especially from the control of her "war hero" father and becomes involved in a gang of small time con-men in Colonus. The gang leader is her old favourite primary school teacher, who is now a beggar and blind (in her imagination a personification of the ancient Oedipus). Everything, however, has changed in her old neighbourhood: The school is now a brothel, her old teacher a shadow of his former self and the old school janitor is a look-out man and right hand man of the gang leader. The old janitor is sphinx-like in his obsession with posing riddles. As a last ditch attempt to become rich, the gang organises a robbery involving the antiquities of Colonus. This will act as the impetus for the evolution of a tragedy.

An interesting film where Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" meets contemporary Greece, the threads of the novel interweaving with modern-day problems including urban living, crime, white-slave trade and flimsy personal relationships that get reduced to carnal contacts. A Greek man in his 60s forms a meaningful relationship with a Russian woman in her mid-20s. He is a watchmaker, she is a prostitute who has bonded herself to two-years work in a brothel so that her family back in Russia can have some money. The relationship is more akin to a father- daughter one than a sexual one, but the threads of Raskolnikov's romance in "Crime and Punishment" exist in the minds of both of the key players. Music underlies the action as it is important part of the lives of both man and woman.