The miracle of the Sargasso Sea – The lynchian psychodrama in the sun | Movie

A The Greek director Syllas Tzoumerkas – who has already directed difficult films like Homeland (2010) and A Blast (2014) – was the screenwriter of the excellent film of mid-life male. Satire Suntan (2016).

Tzoumerkas's film takes place on a branch of strange that creaks. It's a bizarre film, sometimes almost lynchian, alienated and alienating, sprinkled – at first, anyway – with dream visions of biblical scenes in the hot sun. His absurd story to the limit may only be the pretext for his strangeness chart and his dysfunctional bacchbad.

The introductory sequences appear to be those of a regular police drama about a policeman from a big city who resumes his life in a sleepy country. This is the kind of thing that is broadcast on television on Sunday night, and I wonder if Tzoumerkas originally developed his project for this more conventional purpose.

Angeliki Papoulia plays the role of Elisabeth, a tough policeman who coldly interrogates an alleged terrorist. But regardless of her ability, Elisabeth must be afraid to leave Athens and lie down, terrorized by the possibility that the terrorists are tracking her and her young son. Or, ambiguously, she is disgusted by the idea that her superiors simulate the supposed threat with pictures planted to make him falsify the confessions of their detainee in exchange for "protection" of the police.

Be that as it may, she and her son travel to Mesolongi, in western Greece, where she now holds the position of head of the local station, disguised as a witness protection man with a wig or very strange blond dye job. She is extravagantly aggressive and drinks a lot, she is involved in a complicated affair with a local man.

Her destiny is to rub a local woman, Rita (interpreted by the co-scriptwriter of the film, Youla Boudali), who has the hard task of emptying eels in a factory. Rita is being bullied and abused by a brother, Manolis (Hristos Pbadalis), who runs a nightclub in the city and seems to use it as a hostess to facilitate the drug movement in his establishment. Manolis Pompous makes a very good figure by taking care of his elderly mother, suffering from dementia, and makes fun of Rita with the belief that the old woman loves him more than her.

One night, Manolis – who also seems to have hoped to become a pop star – catches the microphone in his nightclub and gets carried away by a winding song that turns into a rant at how horrible Mesolongi is, to the rage of the population local. It ends on a nightmare on the beach with the doctor of the Vbadilis Hospital (Argyris Xafis), the Attorney General Andreas (Laertis Malkotsis) and his brother Michalis (Thanasis Dovris), who has learning difficulties. And if you did not suspect that everyone was involved in some sort of macabre group dysfunction, you would certainly do it after the very strange "dinner" scene to which almost everyone is present.

Elisabeth and Rita – in their agony – aspire (or may be carried involuntarily downstream) to a free, liberated Sargbado Sea – a nesting place for marine life, including eels, endangered. Is this the point? May be. It's a film that generates a lot more heat than light, a psycho-melodrama that is reduced to ashes in the sun.