Attenberg (2010) Reviews

• An intriguing, but ultimately unsatisfying study of the human condition

  jonrosling2011-09-05

  I'd heard nothing about ATTENBERG until I picked up a review booklet in the local indie cinema in my town and was intrigued by the premise. It's difficult to explain the story as such because this isn't really a story piece, but more of a study in character and relationships, and the human condition. As a character study the film-makers perhaps deliberately draw parallels with nature documentaries which observe animal behaviour without really making any emotional connection between man and beast. The film draws attention to this - as the main character Marina, played here by Ariana Labed, watches Sir David Attenborough on TV describing his experience of coming face to face with a gorilla. He sees it as a connection with nature like no other he has experienced. Marina herself realises that there is no emotional content in her life, no connection with those around her. Her candid questioning of her father's sexuality and the off-hand conversation about the process of cremation after his death lays bare the emotional desert that she exists in. Her cold relationship with best friend Bella, and Bella's clumsy attempts to set alight the fires of sexual yearning in Marina further show that she (Marina) is spiritually, emotionally empty. Even her attempts - ultimately successful - to lose her virginity to the nameless engineer she drives to and from work each day in her job as a taxi driver are emotionless, cold, stark. She describes each stage of their tenderness, each aspect of love-making stripping it of any feeling, warmth, humanity. Marina is played brilliantly by Ariana Labed, who hides behind a stillness in both her face and eyes, barely revealing anything except in the strange dances with Bella. Evangelia Randou succeeds in bringing darkness to Bella. She is unhindered by thoughts of feeling and emotion, tenderness and love and in every respect she plays the darker, animalistic side to Marina. It was easy to think for the first act that Bella was not a real character but a shadow side to Marina, satisfying the hidden fantasises Marina has, about sex and even, in a Freudian twist, about her own father. Marina almost gets there but the death of her father, the functional process of packing him off to Germany to be cremated (cremation is legal in Greece and has been since 2006, but is still frowned upon by the Orthodox Christian church there) pulls her back into a world that is hard and cold and stark. She stands and watches his coffin packaged, x-rayed for the flight, marked with "THIS WAY UP" stickers like some Amazon or eBay parcel. There is a moment of feeling as she chases briefly after the pick up that takes him to the plane but in the end the film pulls back from allowing the character the emotional epiphany it has been building to. She scatters his ashes into the sea, driven there by Bella, clothed in a functional visibility jacket and struggling to prise off the lid from the urn. There seems to be no feeling, except maybe disappointment that there is no deeper feeling as the waves wash him away. Marina has not opened the door to love, feeling, loss, emotion. And it's this that I struggled with in the film. What it said to me was that humans can be really no different from animals, going through the day by day business of survival. It shows people in all their functional purpose - working, eating, dying. It doesn't hold back from showing it's characters naked, like the apes in the jungle. There is a notion in this that we have a reservoir of compassion and love, and a whole glut of deeper emotions to give but that it remains untapped; and that we are perhaps trapped by our circumstance and surroundings and past and thus prevented from expressing our true selves. Our characters live in a rundown industrial town, and the story itself was written against the backdrop of riots in Greece at austerity measures and economic crisis. The film-makers and writers are asking: Is this all we are? Industry? Economy? Money? Simple black and white things? Or is there something else. But they never answer the question for Marina and her plight is left unresolved, unsatisfied. The cinematography in the film - by Thimios Bakatakis - is beautiful, still. It is a series of tableau into which movement sometimes intrudes, the emotions stirring the mind. But ultimately it is the failure to resolve Marina's dilemma that leaves the film missing that final piece of the jigsaw that would have made it an art-house classic.

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• Dark, unpleasant movie about contemporary Greece

  tangymichel2016-02-23

  Dark, unpleasant movie about contemporary Greece, set by a dying father and a lost-soul daughter. Strange how you can fall in love with an actress you haven't seen before, as I did with Ariane Labed playing Marina. I guess she reminded me both physically and spiritually of an ex-girlfriend. Attractive, somehow boyish, always making the other move, both at a distance and now and then unexpectedly intimate. All the talking in other reviews about Marina being emotionally 'dead' is total nonsense. You have to (try to) understand this character, but not many men are willing or able to. To me she was the shining light in this portrayal of a depressed, bankrupt and humiliated country. This movie worked like a magnet to me. After I finished watching it, I was almost certain the director had to be a woman of about my age. I was right. I suppose Ariane has a great filming future ahead of her, but I hope she will perform in movies like this one. But it could just as well be her best role already.

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• Very interesting piece of work

  hanagomolakova2011-07-11

  I saw this film at a KVIFF screening and just had to sit down and write this bit about it. I think I've seen quite a bit of various films, but this was a real "cinema extraordinaire"… Like Dogtooth, which Tsangari co-produced, Attenberg is a clear criticism of contemporary Greece and the decay of values on a sample so precious to the Greek culture – a family. Inspired by the BBC series studying the behavior of animals by David Attenborough, the film tries to do something similar, only the with people. Mispronunciation of the biologist's name provides the title to the film. The plot is quite simple and easy to get. Marina, a 23 year old is only just starting to experiment with her sexuality at the background of a deserted factory, a remnant of industrial Greece of the last century. Her father, who's dying of cancer, only speaks of the procedure of having his body cremated elsewhere, as this is apparently a taboo in Greece. Marina's experimenting her first sexual experience with her best friend Bella, who has apparently had her share already. Enter "Engineer", a nameless character, who serves Marina almost like a human figurine for her first sexual experience. Let the story begin. Hold on, but there's no story here. Tsangari is not interested in her characters and their journey of how they got being what they are or where they're going. Rather, she studies their character and she does so mercilessly. She doesn't stop before anything including stripping her characters (and their protagonists) naked, literary. Its not just their bodies we see naked, but also all their secret thoughts and feelings, lets them express everything on the screen for the voyeur-predator sitting in the audience, serving them blood-dripping raw. To even deepen the animal-like impression the audience gets when seeing the four lead characters, Tsangari lets them act like real animals, and uses these sequences as intermission, sort of, in her film, giving it an even more bizarre impression. The colors are very simple as well, the general greyness interrupted only by images of the monstrous factory nearby. Camera bets everything on stills having the pattern interrupted only by a moment when Marina and Bella play tennis and tensions between them escalate. Overall, a very interesting film more likely to shock and make your head spin rather than bore you.

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• A Successful Tableau of Post Modern Greece

  kyanberu2013-03-22

  I liked this film, but only after making the following assumptions about what director Maria Tsangari was trying to do: (I) Depict current post-Christian Greece as an emotionally dead society that had failed to develop properly as had the rest of Europe (hence the need for cremation in Germany, music from France). (II) Make Marina the symbol for Modern Greece. She is devoid of human feeling, and yet the only character who really matters. Her architect father is dying. Her engineer lover is an automaton. And I think Bella does not really exist, but is Marina's alter ego--the real human Marina would like to be (this would explain their synchronized dancing and Marina's request that Bella sleep with her father). (III) Show humans as little different from the gorillas seen on Sir David Attenborough's BBC show. The naked and semi-naked women parading around the changing room could have been a scene from an Attenborough nature documentary. When Marina and her lover were bouncing on the bed like gorillas they were making a conscious attempt to go back to their roots; to escape the emotional sterility of modern Greece. It is a movie of beautiful, haunting tableaux. The closing scene of trucks rolling though the industrial landscape after the ashes of its architect were scattered in the nearby sea shows that life on earth goes on, regardless.

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• Intertwined In Mastery And Exploration.

  mshackletonchavez2018-12-25

  What a film, I adored this feature. For its bravery, uniqueness and willingness to be something different, in almost every aspect. Directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari, this feature was a true experience. An arthouse film from Greece, in Greek and parts in French plus a dash of English, it had such a character, and tone which shone through the screen with such confidence and clarity. The direction is masterful, guiding the four main performances to every beat, it doesn't feel overlong or cringed, it is sublime, and pure. The main performance by Ariane Labed was perfect, she delivered her characters fear, inexperience, crudeness, wackiness, and curiosity with such a command, that is quiet yet enthralling. This being her first film performance, and a tough one to wrestle with, it is classful and incredible that it was delivered so well, despite the characters absurdity. Evangelia Randou as Bella was great, she played the promiscuous character well. In particular I found for the random cuts to where Marina and Bella would walk down the pathway in the strangest ways, dancing or pouncing about, they were hilarious and truly something which lightened the somewhat heavy theme of the picture. Vangelis Mourikis as Spyros was surprisingly funny, I had though that his character would be boring, but in the end, I sympathised with him greatly and his final fate is sad, yet it is what would always of happened. Yorgos Lanthimos also appears in this film, his character is a vehicle for Marina to explore the new world which she enters, and he plays the part very well, without an ounce of amateurism as an actor, while many of his scenes are highly sexual, the narrative focuses deeply on the characters, and how much they speak during their interactions, which is funny since these are the only scenes with great deal of dialogue, which was deeply ironic and funny. The screenplay and narrative of this film are on paper rather thin, however when played on screen; they become so full of life and so rich. The characters may seem catatonic on the facade, but if one pays attention, they become so layered. Though little is spoken throughout this feature, very much is said through body language, though sound, these are highly visual performances. And that is how the character development is delivered, and is driven by bad circumstances and poor decisions, that deliver such strong characterisation. The screenplay can'y have been very long, yet it delivers so much. The narrative is further aided by the masterful cinematography. It is in a 1.85:1 which immediately is different and gives a larger, more juvenile looking frame, on my screen it was very engaging. In addition to this, the camera acts as as if it were a person, but always either slowly moving or sat down, it feels very natural. No shot if forced, nor extreme, it is a visceral experience. It is beautifully filmed. It was done on 35mm film, this gives it something of a timeless look, for it has nether the sharpness of 64mm film, nor the grainy and retro look of 16mm film. It is my personal favourite type of film, and seeing it used to its greatest effect, in mostly natural lighting, with natural angles, it was a sight to behold. A welcome gift for weary eyes. On the negative side, in sone small segment towards the end of the second act, the film loses a little steam, and slows down a tad but then picks up again very quickly. Also I felt that Yorgos Lanthimos' character could have been explored a little more than what was given. The uniqueness of this film cannot be understated. From the sheer quirkiness of certain scenes, which can go so far as pure madness, it was absolutely intoxicating and engaging. This is not a phrase I like to use, but I couldn't take my eyes off the screen, I was staring at it the whole way through, even the more disturbing and intimate scenes, this film as such character and breath of uniqueness that is just not present in so many other films. The way the natural colours look, the film, the framing, the performances and the remarkable screenplay and strong direction, overall give an interesting and ultimately fun experience, I was very glad to have seen this obscure and mostly forgotten about film, I give it a very healthy 9/10

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