Review of Attenberg (2010) by Walter M — 11 Mar 2012

"Attenberg" starts with Marina(Ariane Labed) and Bella(Evangelia Randou) kissing each other. Calm down! It's not what you think. Marina is just curious to learn about kissing from her more experienced best friend but is none too thrilled with the experience and wonders if she, in fact, might be asexual.(In all honesty, I don't care for French kissing, either.) Anyway, Marina has more serious things to worry about like her father Spyros(Vangelis Mourikis), an architect, who is seriously ill. At the end of the day, she still has to go to work where she drives around an engineer(Giorgos Lanthimos).

Some might be disappointed that the wild, woolly and thoughtful movie "Attenberg" has little to say on the current crisis in Greece but it still has plenty to say about the country, starting with Spyros' rant about Greek history and also in what little future he has left, as corpses could not be cremated in Greece until very recently, which leaves his decision to be a final act of defiance.(From what I learned online, the Greek Orthodox Church feels it defiles the body but then they started to run out of room in the cemeteries. See, you learn something new everyday.) For Marina, she is having her first experiences with sex and death, as her conversations with her father have become very frank indeed(I personally do not want to think of my parents having sexual organs, and I don't think many other people do.) but still has plenty of time to play with her best friend(there are occasional intervals with them doing silly walks which simultaneously divert us and them) and watch nature documentaries.