Kinlever Kinlever
I enjoyed this film all the way through. Its a clear, human, real life story about the life on Greek islands, which all over the year function as typical villages, and during the summer they turn into glamorous resorts of sex, alcohol, orgies, nudism, etc. During those couple of months, the whole island is at the disposal of young, annoying and irresponsible, mainly foreign tourists. Everything is on sale, since those obnoxious tourists'money means existence and survival for the locals. In that atmosphere, we can see a personal trauma of Kostis, a lonely, disappointed and failed man, apparently overqualified physician, who has suffered unnamed emotional wrecks in his previous life, and came to the small island to work, as a result of some random circumstances. Unprepared for the sudden and wild input of the uncontrolled young and sexy tourists, he jumps without any reserve into what seems to be a compensation for his dull, failed previous life. Here we can see a tragedy of a man who apparently wasted the best years of his life into a wrong direction, or simply, made an imbalance between work and life, ambitions and reality, or simply did not have enough luck, and, as a result of all that, suffered heavy burn outs and disappointment. It is a man who has not "lived life" at the right moment, and who is, even at mature age, incapable to act as an adult. So he misplaces his lust for a young oversexualized tourist Anna, who just came to have a fun without any borders , for a life-changing love, turning himself into a complete clown and even a perv. It is so obvious to a viewer that Kostis sticks to this ridiculous attraction simply because he has a need to regain some meaning in his life, something motivating which would make him alive. The random appearance of his successful schoolmate as a tourist on the island shows us what he could have been, and what he failed in his professional and private life. It is clear that Kostis is desperately trying to compensate for that by believing in some heavenly love and relationship which could be an anesthetic for other flows in life. The girl who is young enough toe be both his mistress and his daughter, is so obviously a parody of the "life changing girl", just Kostis does not see it.The film stops right at the moment when Kostis is just about to fall to the lowest point of the human being behavior. Luckily, he stops himself at the very last moment, and comes back to the reality. It is a little bit disappointing that in the end we did not see whether he has achieved any catharsis, or any personal gain from all the trauma he suffered. Otherwise, the film is recommendable because of its clear cuts in motifs and intentions, good cast, exciting plot, good acting and very good photography.
mazzaschi
The theme and the setting attract a viewer, but then one's enthusiasm is slowly dissipated by a Chinese water torture of watching the glowering face of the protagonist. Not even the voyeuristic examination of perfect tanned and naked bodies can pay the viewer sufficiently for enduring this film. The emotional issues the doctor faces are settled in the normal male before high school graduation and never need revisiting.
Skint111
An unhappy middle-aged doctor is posted to a Greek island where he meets a hedonistic group of young people, one of which, a beautiful, liberated girl, he falls for.This is the kind of film that puritanical, emotionally stunted Hollywood - and probably even the rest of increasingly Islamified Western Europe - is not capable of making nowadays. It's a searingly human drama about unrequited love, the consequences of ageing, and the depths to which a human can sink when failure and rejection become commonplace. It's brave, bold and beautiful.Casually erotic (the actress who plays the frequently nude Anna could be described as cinematic Viagra), superbly acted by the lead (his character has to plummet to depths that are excruciating to watch) and unnervingly accurate in whatever scene it turns its eye to, it dares to tell a story that is as dark as we all are beneath our exteriors. And it triumphs.The outraged person who gives this film 1/10 on this site hilariously appears not to have even seen it as they get a major plot point completely wrong.
GeorgMax
I have to say that I really enjoyed the way this film unfolded. And it seldom happens watching movies anymore, lately scenarios are predictable and repetitive, this one is none of these. The director did a superb job in building up his characters. The movie's main theme shows how desire can blind you to the point that you have no self awareness, where the central character becomes hypnotized and losses all sense of his dignity and humanity. Makis Papadimitriou who plays a single, unloved solitary man in his 50'sis, does a superb job. He is an older man who falls madly in love and although at times he had to be excessive, his acting was realistic and left me suffocating, wanting to get into the screen to stop him. The cinematography was amazing, set in a sleepy sandy little Greek island, a paradise, a place that we would all want to fall in love.
