Middle-aged doctor Kostis (Makis Papadimitriou from Chevalier) hauls a lifetime of disappointment along with his suitcase when he arrives on the tiny Greek resort island of Antiparos. It’s the drab depths of the low season, and no amount of optimistic Christmas tinsel can garland the fact that this is a dead end, for career and life. This pre-title sequence has something of the dour humour of Aki Kaurismäki and provides a stark contrast to the main body of the film, set eight months later in August.
After Kostis tends to injured tourist Anna (Elli Tringou), he is granted temporary membership of her gilded circle of beautiful friends. She treats him like a cross between a pet and a beer dispenser; he doggedly manufactures a reality in which they will end up together. The inevitable trajectory is agonising – director Argyris Papadimitropoulos brilliantly uses rhythms and repetition to capture Kostis’s fall from grace. And Papadimitriou, who looks like a partially deflated John C Reilly, demonstrates again the fearless embrace of male insecurity that made him such a memorable presence in Chevalier.
