A wonderfully original coming-of-age film from Greece as a late-blooming 20-something embarks on her first sexual relationship. “An imaginative curio… whose emotional power creeps up on you.” — Sight & Sound
An imaginative curio of animal gestures whose emotional power creeps up on you.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2011
Attenberg 2010
Adeptly shifting between themes of sex and death, and tones of deadpan black comedy and clear-eyed but affectionate drama, this wonderfully original Greek curiosity invites us to observe an unusual creature: late-blooming 23-year-old Marina. Her father, an architect who designed much of the decaying seaside town they live in, is terminally ill and calmly preparing for death. Sexually inexperienced, she is repulsed by the clumsy French-kissing lessons of her more worldly friend Bella. She nevertheless embarks on an equally clumsy (sometimes hilariously so) relationship with a visiting engineer. Director Athina Rachel Tsangari observes her characters in a mode that evokes the nature documentaries that Marina loves (the title is a play on the name of her hero, David Attenborough). Tsangari was a producer on 2009’s Dogtooth, and even though her film displays a similar sexual frankness and cynical humour it proves to be a very different, kinder-hearted beast. — MM