This is a pretty complicated film so I don't know where to start from.
It is the story of 3 different families living in the same building and leaving Athens to go on vacation. On the same day. The title day. Virgin Mary's celebration. Things get a bit more complicated when a thief enters the building. The main idea behind the movie isn't bad at all. Problem is that Dekapentavgoustos often gets too dramatic, specially with the subplot of the sick little girl. Not to mention her parents and her stupid fat brother- all of them annoying characters. Giannaris is supposed to be depicting reality in his films but I believe he kind of lost it here. Why? Let's see: The family goes on vacation and the little sick girl gets lost. First couple: They run over an old lady- afterwards the girl (Theodora Tzimou) nearly gets drowned. Second couple: they take a hitcher on the car with them (Papadopoulos, leading actor in Omiros and From The Edge Of The City). He screws the girl, then steals the guy's money and leaves. Sure, these things do happen but its hard for anybody to believe all of them can happen to these related persons at the exact same time.... Actually the film managed to keep me interested for the first 65 minutes or so. After that, I stopped caring due to the melodramatic situations and the scene where the thief finds some girl in the street and gets involved with her. The ending sucked as well, sorry.
Oh I forgot to mention the "controversial" scene of the movie where the thief puts on a wedding dress and make-up. That was rubbish and was totally unnecessary, sorry. Homosexual obsessions of a homosexual filmmaker....
Theodora Tzimou has done better in some of her other works- her performance in the scene where she talks to her secret boyfriend on the phone is pretty bad. The fat TV-oriented actress who plays the sick girl's mother was horrible as well. Unlike Gianis Oikonomidis, Giannaris was never a director who went for perfection when it came to acting.
Visually, this is certainly the director's finest movie, you can tell he has a bigger budget this time and the cinematography is flawless. However, it is obvious that he is trying to make the movie look more mainstream this time as it lacks the raw, hand-held camera style of APO TIN AKRI TIS POLIS and OMIROS.
The music score had lots in common with the one in APO TIN AKRI... but it was less interesting.
Overall, I believe this movie is the director's weakest. It takes more than great visual style to make a great movie.
It is the story of 3 different families living in the same building and leaving Athens to go on vacation. On the same day. The title day. Virgin Mary's celebration. Things get a bit more complicated when a thief enters the building. The main idea behind the movie isn't bad at all. Problem is that Dekapentavgoustos often gets too dramatic, specially with the subplot of the sick little girl. Not to mention her parents and her stupid fat brother- all of them annoying characters. Giannaris is supposed to be depicting reality in his films but I believe he kind of lost it here. Why? Let's see: The family goes on vacation and the little sick girl gets lost. First couple: They run over an old lady- afterwards the girl (Theodora Tzimou) nearly gets drowned. Second couple: they take a hitcher on the car with them (Papadopoulos, leading actor in Omiros and From The Edge Of The City). He screws the girl, then steals the guy's money and leaves. Sure, these things do happen but its hard for anybody to believe all of them can happen to these related persons at the exact same time.... Actually the film managed to keep me interested for the first 65 minutes or so. After that, I stopped caring due to the melodramatic situations and the scene where the thief finds some girl in the street and gets involved with her. The ending sucked as well, sorry.
Oh I forgot to mention the "controversial" scene of the movie where the thief puts on a wedding dress and make-up. That was rubbish and was totally unnecessary, sorry. Homosexual obsessions of a homosexual filmmaker....
Theodora Tzimou has done better in some of her other works- her performance in the scene where she talks to her secret boyfriend on the phone is pretty bad. The fat TV-oriented actress who plays the sick girl's mother was horrible as well. Unlike Gianis Oikonomidis, Giannaris was never a director who went for perfection when it came to acting.
Visually, this is certainly the director's finest movie, you can tell he has a bigger budget this time and the cinematography is flawless. However, it is obvious that he is trying to make the movie look more mainstream this time as it lacks the raw, hand-held camera style of APO TIN AKRI TIS POLIS and OMIROS.
The music score had lots in common with the one in APO TIN AKRI... but it was less interesting.
Overall, I believe this movie is the director's weakest. It takes more than great visual style to make a great movie.