19/02/2024 - BERLINALE 2024: Yorgos Zois’s second feature sets out as a mysterious erotic thriller with psychological elements, but gradually melts into a predictable relationship (melo)drama

An offspring of the so-called Greek Weird Wave, Yorgos Zois debuted almost a decade ago with the unsettling Interruption [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Daphné Patakia
interview: Yorgos Zois
film profile], an exploration of the nebulous boundary between fiction and reality. His subsequent full-length attempt, the unequivocally fictional Arcadia [+see also:
trailer
interview: Yorgos Zois
film profile], currently presented in the Berlinale’s Encounters strand, navigates the liminal space between life and death while oscillating between realms resembling slumber and wakefulness. Almost at first glance, one feels immersed in a bizarre world of coded events and dialogues, the challenging interpretation of which creates the urge to keep following the increasingly uncanny plot that unfolds. 

A doctor (Vangelis Mourikis) and his female companion (Angeliki Papoulia), who seems to be his wife, are involved in the identification of the victims from a car accident while travelling by the seaside. It takes half of the film until we understand what the couple’s relationship with the dead might be and why they appear to be so affected — a puzzling game that keeps the viewer’s attention. Another catchy element is the woman's occasional nocturnal forays to a dubious beach bar full of naked people, all too eager to attend to her carnal desires. Additionally, some teasingly inexplicable details further spice up the already awkward configuration between occurrences and characters: shoes that stick and cannot be removed; people who cling to other people and won't let them go; ghost-summoning sessions. Аny further comment on the plot would be a spoiler but it is worth saying that, as the mystery begins to unravel, the story turns out to be as old as time, a tale which, without the initial entanglement, would perhaps have been too trite to deserve retelling. 

Since her first significant appearance on screen in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Yorgos Lanthimos
film profile], Angeliki Papoulia seems to have been playing the same character again and again, a woman with the look of a frightened doe who unwittingly becomes involved in perverse games. In Arcadia, her heroine is literally placed in a situation where she observes her life dispassionately and from a distance, as if no part of her own fate depended on her. Her melancholic look, along with Mourikis’ sorrowful eyes, is in productive sync with the autumn landscape deftly captured by cinematographer Konstantinos Koukoulios, which suggests both a disquieting foreboding and a feeling of inhabiting some unreal world — namely an idyllic Arcadia of inexplicable desires that are both terrifying and alluring, and from which it is not easy to break free. This is perhaps the film's most appealing artistic achievement, especially against the backdrop of the ambitiously spun script, written by Konstantina Kotzamani and Zois himself, the depth of which ultimately doesn’t live up to the superfluously complicated fable. 

Arcadia was produced by Greece’s Foss Productions and Homemade Films, and co-produced by Bulgaria’s Red Carpet and Two & Two Pictures from the USA. World sales are handled by Beta Cinema.