Mostra Internazionale d Arte Cinematografica Venice

Venice Orrizonti 2020

Apples, Christos Nikou, Drama - Greece, Poland, Slovenia, 2020, 90 '.

After losing all memories, a man will try to build a new identity. A woman will help him, also in the same situation.

This co-production though stylish and hip wades through a man's depression, what director Christos Nikou calls lost 'identity'. Apples are regularly consumed, arranged on the kitchen table, and at a local grocer to drive home the point. As in many films about repression only a woman can (try) to fix him. We wait and observe many apple carvings, hospital attention - which includes giving him an apartment and a wardrobe to get him back on track - nightclub scenes with retro music (California dreamin' and Scarsborough Fair) and a dog that seems to be the only one he recognizes. It is really hard to have any empathy for this character titled #14842 (Aris Servetalis) and even harder to know how a young woman (Sofia Georgovassilli) sees any virtue beyond his depression. But like him, she takes Polaroid shots to conjure her 'lost' memory. We have had to live with him a while before he meets her and wish we could warn her: beware of middle age men meticuously carving apples into sections eaten very slowly from the blade of a knife.  But she comes without a warning too. 

Thoughts go to whether this is a new edition to "New Greek Cinema" after Yorgos Lanthimos but have decided against it.

Moira Sullivan

Filmfestivals.com

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