A surprising little number from Greece directed by Zacharias Mavroeidis and co-written by him and Xenofon Chalatsis.
The story features two gay men Demosthenes (Yorgos Tsiantoulas) a former actor and his friend Nikitas (Andreas Labropoulos) who is trying to create his first film with foreign funding.
The two of them go to a gay nude beach out of Athens and spend the day trying to start writing the film taking as their starting point a summer two years previously when Demosthenes broke up with Panos and ended up looking after the latter’s chihuahua named Carmen.
That summer also saw the passing of Demosthenes’ father.
This character is not really present but we do get to see his rather arch mother (Roubini Vasilakopoulou).
In a series of flashbacks, the two explore both what happened and Demosthenes’ issues with letting go of his former boyfriend together with what would make a decent film. At one point they even consider turning it into a musical.
It is all a bit meandering and uneven but there are some nice moments and some dry humour and the tying up of all the strands at the end is well done.
The fact that the director manages to make an almost philosophical film while naked bodies parade by and gay sex is treated as an everyday thing is certainly a step forward for Greek cinema.
There were some flat moments but on the whole I was quite intrigued by this film and the eye candy helped one over the rest.
2 stars plus
passionfilm 