Athina Rachel Tsangari/Greece/2010/95 mins/NC 15+
Shown as part of Glasgow Film Festival @ Cineworld, 19th-20th Feb
In what might be the makings of some kind of New Weird Greek film-making movement, Athina Rachel Tsangari, associate producer of last year’s bizarre Dogtooth turns director with the equally bizarre Attenberg. Its central character Marina (Ariane Labed) is a nerdy, introspective twenty-three year old, disgusted by sex, obsessed with David Attenborough’s wildlife films and the band Suicide. An only child, she lives with her equally quirky architect father and works part time as a hackney cab driver in a dull Greek coastal industrial complex. She passes the time with her best friend, the more sexually experienced Bella (Evangelia Randou), practicing snogging and silly walks, as well as accompanying her father to regular visits to the hospital for cancer treatments. These particular vignettes reveal through the father and daughter’s exchanges where she might have inherited her eccentric worldview.
While the film is shot in an almost clinical manner, with long takes creating a dispassionate, observational tone, perhaps in homage to Marina’s beloved wildlife films, Tsangari’s keen eye for the absurd and Labed’s assured performance make Attenberg frequently very funny and surprisingly touching. The thin plot and occasional longueurs could be off-putting for some, but the dry, deadpan storytelling style makes this film a genuine original and refreshingly different. A compelling slice of Greek weirdness.