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.
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.