The Boston Phoenix
Review from issue: October 8 - 15, 1998

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Hellenic gaze

Gifts from the New Greek Festival

by Scott Heller

On a world stage where American movies hog the spotlight and everyone else has to settle for crumbs, Greek cinema had a very good year. The venerable director Theo Angelopoulos took home the grand prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, for Eternity and a Day.

That film is too new to be part of the New Greek Cinema Festival that opens this week at the Museum of Fine Arts. But for those who haven't yet caught it, the festival brings back to town Angelopoulos's 1995 Ulysses' Gaze (October 11 at 12:30 p.m.), in which Harvey Keitel plays a mystery man who journeys across the Balkans in search of a lost film made by early pioneers of cinema. The road is the familiar setting for many of the films in the MFA series. And the Balkans -- and a confused Europe, in general -- loom large for film directors working in a restless, brooding key.

Three foreigners mind their business on an Athens bus until accosted by a panhandler. "Albanian scum, why don't you go home!" he shouts as they scurry off the bus. A sensitive Greek man follows behind. "Is this how Greeks usually treat you?" he asks. "No," they answer. "First time." But doubtless not the last. This is the opening of Christos Vouporas & Giorgos Korras's See You (Mirupafshim) (October 17 at 3:30 p.m.), an earnest portrait of one's man immersion in Albanian culture. Disaffected with his yuppie counterparts, the protagonist, Christos looks to the trio of underemployed illegal immigrants for the meaning he finds missing in his own life. Ultimately a trip to Albania complicates the picture, reminding him that he is only a visitor, not an exile.

The road bounces as it carries along the thick-headed heroes of Sotiris Goritsas's Balkanisateur (October 9 at 8 p.m.; October 24 at 4 p.m.). Looking to make a black-market killing by converting Greek drachmas into American dollars, old friends Fotis and Stavros drive to Bulgaria and Switzerland. Nothing quite works, especially their car, giving Goritsas the chance to craft vignettes of cultural collision along the way. You'll find echoes of the recent French movie Western in Balkanisateur. But 90 minutes on the road with this hangdog pair feels like a long trip.

Athanasia and Christina, the winsome duo at the heart of The Cow's Orgasm (October 16 at 8:15 p.m.; October 24 at 2 p.m.), would do almost anything to get out of their stifling rural town. Breezing down the road on Christina's motorbike, they are a vision of freedom -- almost. They're still under the thumb of bossy mothers, protective fathers, and a boring high-school teacher. If only they could flee with their new boyfriends, an aspiring musician nicknamed Murphy and the manager of the bar where he plays.

In her first film, director Olga Malea spices up these familiar elements with enough local color to make the story fresh. This is, after all, the rare coming-of-age film that hinges on the artificial insemination of a cow. And the scene of a wizened Greek grandma sticking a tampon where it doesn't belong is a hoot and a half.

Two films loosely based on true stories take very different approaches to their subjects. Vassiliki (October 16 at 5:45 p.m.) is a straight-ahead melodrama of doomed love set against the backdrop of the Greek civil war in 1949. The title heroine meets the man of her dreams inconveniently when he arrests her for trying to smuggle food to her Communist-rebel husband. Hubby is quickly out of the picture, and the bond between Vassiliki and her captor, Loufakos, begins in rape. If you can stand that premise, then Vassiliki delivers the virtues of an old-fashioned woman's picture. Tamilla Koulieva-Karantinaki suffers nobly as the heroine. And like a Greek Omar Sharif, the strapping Paschalis Tsarouchas makes a compelling if not especially likable hero.

Cavafy, by contrast, is formally the most provocative work in the festival. Nominally a biography of the famed Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, the film eschews big events in favor of mood and sensibility. As he lies dying, Cavafy recalls fleeting moments from his nomadic youth in England, Constantinople, and Alexandria. From behind spectacles that seem to pinch even the hope of a smile off his angular face, the poet takes in the homoerotic pleasures around him. Always wary, never joyful, he spends an isolated life turning "things half-glimpsed" into art.

Cavafy plays at the MFA on October 22 at 8:15 p.m. Director Iannis Smaragdis will be present for another screening, at the Harvard Film Archive, on October 10. At both showings you'll be able to appreciate the film's luscious cinematography and stunning score, the latter thanks to Vangelis of Chariots of Fire fame. Cavafy is dedicated to the composer, and the accolades are deserved. You may not learn much about poetry, but you'll want the CD.

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