Pages

Sunday, May 9, 2021

Apples review – a poignant tale of global memory loss

A worldwide amnesia pandemic takes hold in the striking debut feature from Christos Nikou, a former collaborator of fellow Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos This quietly satirical and unexpectedly moving debut feature from director and co-writer Christos Nikou, who cut his teeth as an assistant director on _Dogtooth_, was Greece’s entry for the international feature Oscar at the recent 93rd Academy Awards. A tale of epidemic memory loss, grief and possible new beginnings, it’s a deadpan tragicomedy that mixes the playful and the poignant in a manner as tasty as a spitter – the bittersweet apples treasured by cidermakers as the perfect fuel for fermentation. Straight-faced Aris Servetalis cuts a mournful figure, his physical presence invoking the joint spectres of Daniel Day-Lewis and Charlie Chaplin. As an outbreak of amnesia rolls across his homeland, his bewildered character, Aris, finds himself unable to remember his name, his occupation or his address. “It happened suddenly to him, like the others,” says the doctor who examines “Number 14842”, before placing him in a programme designed to rehabilitate those bereft of memory and on which his new friend (Sofia Georgovassili) is also enrolled. Continue reading...


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.theguardian.com