A small-time drug dealer struggles to get a legitimate job, and before knowing it, he dives deeper and deeper into the criminal world.
A reality that doesn’t sound like Greek to any Greek. Co-writer/director Fokion Bogris captures through his lens the reality of the Athenian streets and the petty, unorganised crime like few have before him. From a narrative’s point of view, using profusely “lowlifes”, Bogris challenges toxic masculinity, personal and social insecurities, and homophobia through characters that have loads to hide and plenty to lie about. Everyone wants to “score big” or live the “easy life” with the least possible effort, crossing the lines of immoral and illegal without even realising it or caring about it.
From a filmmaking point of view, he creates a neo-noir atmosphere and a sense of realism that numerous members of the Greek audience will identify themselves with. While “realism” in film theory is a subject that opens a lot of cans of worms that make theorists (endlessly) argue with each other, in this instance, what I mean is that, through its minimal editing, it reduces the shot-reverse-shot techniques and, depending on the subject matter, it focuses on either the action or the reaction. In either case, both become – intentionally or unintentionally – funny as, more often than not, the characters’ close-ups express the intended feelings. The same applies when all characters are included in the shot, and the audience gets to experience everyone’s feelings simultaneously. Add the colossal amount of slang and vulgar language to the mix, and the result enhances the realistic effect to the point of surrealism, a movement that, arguably, can characterise numerous societies nowadays.
That particular filmmaking path, paved initially by writer/director Yannis Economides, has upped the game for the Greek cinema and the Greek filmmakers and has allowed the actors to express themselves in a way they struggled to do before, present society in a way that could not be really presented before, and make a statement that the Greek cinema can be as competitive and daring as anybody else’s. Having said that, that school of thought wouldn’t exist now if filmmakers such as Theodoros Angelopoulos, Pantelis Voulgaris, Constantine Giannaris, and Panos H. Koutras (and many more) hadn’t offered so much to the film industry.
Finally, the last round of applause goes to the cast that shines in front of the camera: Vagelis Evangelinos, Stathis Stamoulakatos, Maria Baloutsou, Vasilis Anastasiou, and Sissy Toumasi.
Amercement is definitely worth your while. It’s an eye-opener that “welcomes” its audience to the dark side of the world as you know it.
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Solidarity for all the innocent lives who suffer the atrocities of war!
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