FILMS/
VALSE SENTIMENTALE
Valse Sentimentale
New Directors
Greece, 2007, 109 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Thu, May 1 / 1:30 / Kabuki / VALS01K
Sat, May 3 / 6:30 / Clay / VALS03Y
Wed, May 7 / 9:15 / Kabuki / VALS07K
CREDITS
- prod
-
Constantina Voulgaris, Nikos Nikolettos
- scr
-
Constantina Voulgaris
- cam
-
Dimitris Kassimatis
- editor
-
Kenan Akkawi
- mus
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Nikos Veliotis
- cast
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Loukia Michalopoulou, Thanos Samaras
- source
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Constantina Voulgaris, Themistokleous 43-45 Athens, 10683 Athens, Greece. EMAIL: youpi79@hotmail.com
The perpetual battle between Eros and Thanatos gets a modern twist in this raw and emotionally charged romance between two young tormented souls. Filmed mostly at night, in the streets of Athens’ Exarchia district and in the claustrophobic apartments that Stamatis and Ilektra clutter with the scribbled expressions of their introverted selves, Constantina Voulgaris’s brilliant debut is a work fresh and immediate in its impact, while demonstrating complete control of its subject matter and medium. Focusing on the goth subculture of contemporary Greek youth, Voulgaris creates a sympathetic, lyrical and alternately comical and disturbing portrait of two melancholic loners who become first friends, then lovers. Stamatis and Ilektra embody the goth culture’s sensibility with such equal conviction that at first they seem destined for each other—he the brooding, socially inept youth curled up in bed or walking aimlessly at 4:00 am in his Doc Martens, and she the chain-smoking girl with her hair hiding much of her face. But Stamatis, tortured by thoughts he can only express by cutting his own skin, keeps pushing away his feelings for Ilektra, while the self-abnegating Ilektra’s love for Stamatis survives periodic rejection by hiding behind a shield of masochistic tolerance. The dance of intimacy that engulfs the two lovers is anything but sentimental yet it’s so real, so emotionally earnest that it pierces the heart. It is a beautiful expression of the true nature of young love in all its ambiguity, anguish, awkwardness and ability to nevertheless keep us coming back for more.
—Beverly Berning
New Directors Prize contender. West Coast Premiere. Sponsored by Mediterranean Studies Forum.
