The elaborate slurp of the opening kiss, the wacky walks, lonely 23-year-old Mariana (Ariane Labed) and her dad, Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis) pretending to be gorillas on their hotel bed: there's moments in Attenberg that are kooky, quirky and all the other labels that director Athina Rachel Tsangari hates. They're the bits that singled the film out on its cinematic release last year, but caught alone they're red herrings, eye-catching add-ons to a beautifully told story about a father-daughter relationship that's coming into bloom just a little too late.
Mariana and Spyros live in a quiet port town in Greece. Mariana's a virgin, repulsed by the idea of human contact, but curious all the same. Spyros is dying from cancer. They're building their relationship at chemotherapy sessions and Cat scans. And have started to talk calmly, searchingly with each other about death and sex. Mariana thinks about dad naked, but is convinced he doesn't have a penis. Spyros tells Mariana he's going "back into a giant warm pussy" when he dies, then feels bad about it: "Sometimes I forget you're not my buddy". They may have always talked like this, but it's more likely that death is dragging it out of them.
Lacking a parental influence, Mariana's become an analyst, a devotee of Sir David "At-ten-bo-roo" (hence the film's title), inspired to study the animal behaviour in people. This means turning the microscope on her best friend, Bella (Evangelia Randou) and – despite her reservations – her potential boyfriend (played by Yorgos Lanthimos, who directed the starker, stranger Dogtooth, which Tsangari produced). Bella's sexual experience makes her a threat ("a predator ... not to be trusted"). Meanwhile Mariana's own slow awakening with Lanthimos's "Engineer" is often mired by her desire to scientifically document the act in situ. Mariana's funny – both odd and comical – but there's a thwarted urge to communicate behind her eccentricity. Similarly Labed's performance (which won her the Volpi Cup at Venice in 2010) is intimidating and strange, but it's grounded in a grief and naivety that we can get a grasp on.
Tsangari has said that Attenberg is intended as a description of what it's like to feel alienated from your home country. Mariana is an obvious example of the disconnection, but in a less visceral way, Spyros is too. He looks out on row upon row of bleak worker housing and describes his country as "an industrial colony built on sheep pens", the folly of the petit bourgeoisie's revolution. When he dies his body will be flown to Hamburg and cremated in a country whose religious majority doesn't deny his last wishes.
Tsangari's Greece is restrictive, conservative, quick to vilify difference. It would be easy for the casual viewer to fall into the same trap. Call Attenberg stylised or cool. But taken as a whole it's only as quirky and odd as we are. Strange animals all.
