animal (w&d sofia exarchou)

Animal’s opening shots appear to come from the very end of the film. Set in a hotel resort on a Greek island, the film takes place in the Summer tourist season, but the opening images are wintery, spidery, beautiful. There’s more than a hint of Lynne Ramsey in the way Exarchou paints her story with images. A poeticism which will course through the two hours of a film where narrative always appears to be of secondary importance. In pride of place is character. The film looks at a bunch of ‘animators’ who will perform over the season for tourists from Europe and Russia. The central character is Kalia, a Greek woman who is approaching middle age and finds herself trapped in the youthful lifestyle of all night discos, casual sex and a determined instability. Played with great pathos by Dimitra Vlagopoulou, Kalia is a mother figure to her younger colleagues, especially the dreamy seventeen year old, Eva. But as the film progresses, we understand more and more how lost Kalia is. Exarchou’s use of narrative and edit always resists melodrama, often cutting before the scene reaches its denouement, but in the hypnotic, desperate final karaoke scene, we enter directly into Kalia’s putative nervous breakdown as she sings one of her stalwart songs, Baccara’s Yes Sir I can Boogie. It’s a devastating moment which is all the more powerful  for sneaking up on the viewer without the usual mechanics of plot. Rather we have been slowly immersed in Kalia’s world and her desperation, so that when it is revealed in full, it is almost overwhelming.

Animal feels like a big, ambitious film about Europe, about modern youth, about listless, disconnected communities. The older tourists feed off the blood of their youthful animator hosts, whilst the wealthy retirees, with their their grotesque taste, get the chance to pretend to be young again. It’s often funny, sometimes hideous. Without making any great statements, the film articulates the transience and joys of youth, something our vampire society tries to package and inject, with no real care for the harm it might be causing the younger generation in the process. Animal is an artful piece of neo-realism, which weeps as it sings its cheerful hits.