"Ilias Lambrou’s daring first feature finally gets a U.S. release. The Greek New Wave pioneer's solo debut feature was never officially released stateside. Nearly 15 years after its debut, that's changing."
october 19, 2019
letterboxd user foxandhisfriends
October 20, 2019*
letterboxd user stevezissou
october 22, 2019
letterboxd user 1080bruxelles
Review by Ben ★★★
weird stuff. not his best, but still interesting. my favorite interview with ilias is on a greek film blog back in 2006:
“Yes, I really enjoyed choreographing the fight scenes. Me and my old wrestling coach Dennis worked on them together. I watched a lot of those Russian wrestling gay porn videos for inspiration. You know, the ones where you think they’re going to fuck but they never do. Dennis was really put off when I sent him all those links! I think he told me he had to talk to his wife about it… A lot of this film has elements of my early 20’s in it. Wrestling, being a photographer for hire, making bad movies, living in derelict little towns. But the fight reenactment scenes are my favorite by far. Kostas [Xikominos] and Evangelia [Randou] really brought them to life, making them so awkward and human and pathetic but still a bit pornographic. Yes, definitely pornographic.”
two questions later he says he realized he needed to make cinema when he did acid and set a car on fire with his girlfriend. pervert. has everyone seen those photos of him shirtless on the beach?
weird stuff. not his best, but still interesting. my favorite interview with ilias is on a greek film blog back in 2006:
“Yes, I really enjoyed choreographing the fight scenes. Me and my old wrestling coach Dennis worked on them together. I watched a lot of those Russian wrestling gay porn videos for inspiration. You know, the ones where you think they’re going to fuck but they never do. Dennis was really put off when I sent him all those links! I think he told me he had to talk to his wife about it… A lot of this film has elements of my early 20’s in it. Wrestling, being a photographer for hire, making bad movies, living in derelict little towns. But the fight reenactment scenes are my favorite by far. Kostas [Xikominos] and Evangelia [Randou] really brought them to life, making them so awkward and human and pathetic but still a bit pornographic. Yes, definitely pornographic.”
two questions later he says he realized he needed to make cinema when he did acid and set a car on fire with his girlfriend. pervert. has everyone seen those photos of him shirtless on the beach?
Review by Jim ★
[Reposting my review from IMDB in 2005]
Sounds good on paper but this whole thing is a mess. The director spoke after a screening at TIFF and stumbled around when an audience member asked him about the meaning of his “movie.” He had the nerve to say that he preferred the viewer to see it as he/she likes which just means he wants to feed viewers BS and clearly can't explain what he just showed us. I can assure you there is nothing to get from this movie!! No story, awful acting, terrible pace.
****Since then, Ilias Lambrou has become a big shot. I don't get the hype. Read my review of The Lobster for more of my thoughts and please don't waste your time going to see this
[Reposting my review from IMDB in 2005]
Sounds good on paper but this whole thing is a mess. The director spoke after a screening at TIFF and stumbled around when an audience member asked him about the meaning of his “movie.” He had the nerve to say that he preferred the viewer to see it as he/she likes which just means he wants to feed viewers BS and clearly can't explain what he just showed us. I can assure you there is nothing to get from this movie!! No story, awful acting, terrible pace.
****Since then, Ilias Lambrou has become a big shot. I don't get the hype. Read my review of The Lobster for more of my thoughts and please don't waste your time going to see this
Review by Franco ★★★★★
I thought about this one a lot when I visited Greece a few years ago. You can tell that Lambrou has watched the energy of bored service workers with a lot of care. I saw the same sort of exasperation behind the Greek service workers' eyes that Randou, Servetalis and Xikominos portray so well in Kinetta.
Hopefully the release in New York will allow the film to be critically reappraised. The amount of bad or just plain careless reviews on this website make me sad. Even MoMi’s press release warns that the film is, at best, “a deadpan experiment” for “serious fans”- which I find so dismissive! Maybe I am a serious fan (My Dogtooth blu-ray is placed strategically close to my tv), but I don't think Kinetta is just a film where Ilias Lambrou laid out the groundwork for his languid style; it’s also the loosest he’s ever been as a filmmaker.
The camera wanders beautifully through the scenes, often taking us away from the proper subjects of the movie. In one scene we see a second’s worth of the corpse of a woman on a beach and then the camera shakes away, drifting off into the sky. It takes us four more shots to confirm what we have seen. The film is insanely slow, and when we hit a proper plot point it happens so fast that we are left to wonder if it had truly happened. This is a huge relief next to Lambrou’s later English works. The Lobster and Killing of a Sacred Deer carry the weight of their Hollywood production pretty heavily- they're so suffocated by overwritten plots that the ideas are no longer compelling. Kinetta is the opposite: open, obscure and intriguing. Come back to Greece, Ilias!
I thought about this one a lot when I visited Greece a few years ago. You can tell that Lambrou has watched the energy of bored service workers with a lot of care. I saw the same sort of exasperation behind the Greek service workers' eyes that Randou, Servetalis and Xikominos portray so well in Kinetta.
Hopefully the release in New York will allow the film to be critically reappraised. The amount of bad or just plain careless reviews on this website make me sad. Even MoMi’s press release warns that the film is, at best, “a deadpan experiment” for “serious fans”- which I find so dismissive! Maybe I am a serious fan (My Dogtooth blu-ray is placed strategically close to my tv), but I don't think Kinetta is just a film where Ilias Lambrou laid out the groundwork for his languid style; it’s also the loosest he’s ever been as a filmmaker.
The camera wanders beautifully through the scenes, often taking us away from the proper subjects of the movie. In one scene we see a second’s worth of the corpse of a woman on a beach and then the camera shakes away, drifting off into the sky. It takes us four more shots to confirm what we have seen. The film is insanely slow, and when we hit a proper plot point it happens so fast that we are left to wonder if it had truly happened. This is a huge relief next to Lambrou’s later English works. The Lobster and Killing of a Sacred Deer carry the weight of their Hollywood production pretty heavily- they're so suffocated by overwritten plots that the ideas are no longer compelling. Kinetta is the opposite: open, obscure and intriguing. Come back to Greece, Ilias!