20/11/2024 - In her latest film, Greek director Penny Panayotopoulou uses realism and poetry to convey the condition of a family holding strong in a fragmented society, set against a backdrop of malpractice

Garoufalina Kontozou and Giannis Karampampas in Wishbone

A wishbone, as the Italian Treccani encyclopaedia defines it, is the “name commonly given to the fork-shaped bone of a chicken’s sternum which is often pulled apart by two people on the understanding that the person who comes away with the longer piece will see their wish fulfilled”. In Greek director Penny Panayotopoulou’s film, which was presented at the 25th Lecce European Film Festival before scooping Best Cinematography, the characters have quite a lot to wish for because they have very little. Screened in the international competition’s closing slot, Wishbone [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is another variation on the theme of struggling to get by in daily life which has run through many of the European films competing in this year’s event. But the author (whose previous works include Hard Goodbyes: My Father and September [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) has chosen to give the story a very particular and distinctly socially-focused stamp in this instance, bringing to light the malpractice engaged in by certain law firms who take advantage of people’s economic hardship to fabricate fake cases of medical negligence for their own gain.

It’s a movie which could just as easily have been shot by Ken Loach, the master of English social cinema who was honoured with the Lecce Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Golden Olive Tree this very year. Based on real events and the director’s own personal experience, the film adopts the viewpoint of Kostas (stage actor Giannis Karampampas, in his first leading cinema role), a young man who loves to run around on his motorbike with friends, who loves his girlfriend Stella (Efthalia Papacosta) and who works as a security guard in a public hospital, trying to help as best he can and often going beyond the call of duty. When his brother suddenly dies, he’s forced to take care of his niece and her mother (Alexandra Sakelaropoulou), despite not having much money himself, since the little girl’s mother can’t even care for herself. Kostas is now the head of the family, and he needs money to keep hold of the house where they all live. As such, when someone suggest he give false testimony against a dedicated female doctor in his hospital, in exchange for a heap of money which would solve all of his problems, his conscience falters.

Wishbone is a film with a very simple structure which proceeds in a linear fashion for its two-hour runtime, following Kostas in his work, in his up-and-down relationship with Stella, in his search for money and, primarily, in the time he spends with family. The scenes shot at home, especially in the dining room-veranda where the table is laid (and where they play with a wishbone), are warm and bright. The director, who claims to have taken inspiration from 1970s American cinema for the film’s light and atmosphere, takes a natural and realist approach to capture the condition of this family who stand firm in spite of everything and who find comfort and support among their own company, in a fragmented society where people think only of themselves and their own survival. There are touches of poetry here and there too (the close-ups on the little girl are stunning), which provide respite and lend hope to this particularly sad and hard-hitting social portrait.

Wishbone is co-produced by Greece, France, Germany and Cyprus, via PP Productions, Manny Films, Pallas Film GmbH and Felony Film Productions respectively, in association with Greek firm Asterisk*.

(Translated from Italian)