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BERLINALE 2012 Competition / Greece-Germany

Monolithic Meteora

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Meteora [+see also:
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by Spiros Stathoulopoulos, Greece's candidate in competition at the 62nd Berlinale, could have been a stunning liturgical painting, with its two monasteries perched on top of Thessaly's monoliths facing each other like two steeples, with its fabulous rays of light (photographed by the director himself), with its black shapes not belonging to any particular time, moving with solemnity to the eternal rhythm of its religious rites, with its goats at the top of the hills and the old hermit secluded in a cave. The film's esthetic quality is further enriched by animated images that look like naive religious frescos with their paint peeling off, in front of which pass clouds of papier mâché.

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Stathoulopoulos however made his film to illustrate the tension between the divine and the secular, between spirituality and earthly desires. He does this through the love story of an orthodox catholic monk, Theodoros (Theo Alexander), and a nun, Urania (la Russe Tamila Koulieva), seperated by both the abyss between the rocks on which they live and the demands of their faith. The result is a film with parcimonious dialogue clearly aimed at the more oxthodox of cinema goers, those who like to listen extensively to the song of grasshoppers in sun-parched landscapes or those who like see Thessaly's farmers play the penny whistle in olive groves.

The film's central story of forbidden love would have gained from taking up a little more space compared to the landscapes and religious rites, because the pic-nic sequence, the scene with the most dialogue in the whole film, is quite charming. In it, Theodoros and Urania laugh whole-heartedly as they repeat the word "despair" in their respective languages, before Theodoros tries to force himself on her, an act that she does not entirely refuse. Also worth noting is the very beautiful scene in which the lovers communicate at a distance holding mirrors up to the sun. Seeing love move this blinding spot of light, above a breathtaking natural backdrop, is the kind of image that undeniably justifies making this genre of film.

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(Translated from French)

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