The Cinematheque

“Serious fans will welcome a chance to see this deadpan experiment theatrically.”

John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter

Before Yorgos Lanthimos ushered in an entire weirdo wave in Greek cinema (the ​“movement” was, in the end, arguably all but limited to Lanthimos and collaborator Athina Rachel Tsangari’s output), he made this no-less-weird 2005 curio, his first feature as solo director. Shot handheld and set at a seaside resort during off-season, the cryptic, droll, and, until now, mostly unseen comedy concerns a trio of inscrutable oddballs — a plain-clothes cop, a lovelorn photographer, a hotel chambermaid — who stave off boredom by restaging homicides for a self-made movie. The abuse and humiliation of the meticulously choreographed reenactments soon give way to actual injury and ambiguous intention. Lanthimos’s fascination with role play, fabricated emotion, and spastic body language — central motifs in both Dogtooth and Alps — starts here. Fellow Weird Waver Tsangari (Attenberg, Chevalier) produces.

“Lanthimos’s first solo feature bears, inuncompromisingly lo-fi form, the hallmarks of his singular sensibility.”

Film at Lincoln Center