On the picturesque Athens riviera, the sky is always blue, the sun is always shining, and the palm trees are always green. But on Orfeas Peretzis’ coastline, construction cranes also litter the skyline — the region is attractive to Chinese investors, who want to transform the riviera with new luxury developments — and his teen protagonist would rather linger in parking lots than next to the clear water. In his debut fiction feature aptly titled Riviera, which had its Greek premiere in Thessaloniki’s Meet the Neighbours+ International Competition, writer-director Peretzis leans into an offbeat rhythm, letting his characters float in a state of transition with monotone dialogue and an air of lackadaisicalness, and peels back the layers of a seemingly perfect summer in a seemingly pristine region.

It's the end of secondary school for Alkistis (Eva Samioti), who passes the time sitting beneath a dying palm tree she has named Jerry, claiming to listen to the tree’s words, and hanging out with a working man, Makis (Mihalis Syriopoulos). Her mother Anna (Maria Apostolakea), who runs a guest house with Alkistis’ godfather Petros (Kostas Koronaios), is ready to pack up their things and leave the coast after the never described but apparently gruesome death of her husband. Even the elderly tenant couple is preparing to depart, a mouldy stain growing rapidly on the walls of their room. But Alkistis isn’t ready to leave everything behind.

We see Peretzis’ Athenian riviera as more of a casual underbelly than a façade: the tenant couple would rather sunbathe in the yard with a Bloody Mary in hand than on the beach, while Alkistis bickers sharply with her mother, who’s busy packing up the house. Embedded in Riviera is a rich battle between old versus new and preservation versus transformation, but the script’s poetic dialogue and forest of over-symbolism never quite create the contemplative material the film clearly aims for. For instance, the house’s mouldy wall grows aggressively worse over the course of the film, a sort of festering from the inside, while the opening scenes follow our protagonist’s attempts to cover the wall with – most fittingly – sky-blue paint.

Likewise, the filmmaker almost seems afraid of his script being too literal, using verbosity as a crutch to develop the relationships between his characters. Peretzis’ film is defined by a set of interesting yet indistinct ideas; a repeated woodwind motif further offers an easy way to transition between scenes, but the music never does more than flirt with the lightness lingering between the sadder themes. It’s not long before each conversation between pairs of characters defaults to a set of philosophical aphorisms, delivered most often in careful deadpan. This sense of faux quirkiness drags down the web of intriguing ideas that are brought out by Peretzis’ otherwise clean and memorable direction, with photography by prolific cinematographer Giorgos Valsamis (also seen at the festival with Meat [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Dimitris Nakos
scheda film]) that generously uses telephoto to distance Alkistis from her lived reality and those around her. With this approach, the director is at least able to capture that languid yet fleeting feeling of timelessness in a place you never want to leave.

Riviera is a Greek-French production by StudioBauhaus (Greece) and KG Productions (France) in association with Micro Climat (France). Its world sales are steered by Lights On.