Suntan Movie Trailer

Summer loving, had me a blast," warbled John Travolta in 1978 — but the schlubby, grubby anti-hero of Argyris Papadimitropoulos' Aegean-set anti-romance Suntan isn't so lucky. A professionally mounted but bluntly misanthropic character-study, the director's second solo outing wallows in the worst of human nature with little reward at the end of a mechanically inexorable downward spiral. An opportunistic and arguably irresponsible work which will do absolutely nothing for its cash-strapped country's crucial tourist industry, the picture nevertheless made a sufficient splash on its Rotterdam bow to portend further exposure around the circuit. For many critics and programmers, of course, 'Greece' is still very much the word.

After debuting with the high-tempo crime-comedy Bank Bang in 2008 — a box-office success at home but which received relatively little play elsewhere — Papadimitropoulos teamed up with cinematographer Jan Vogel to co-write and co-direct 2011's schematically downbeat Rotterdam opener Wasted Youth. On Suntan his main collaborator is co-writer Syllas Tzoumerkas, whose 2014 A Blast was among few high-profile Greek films of recent years to tackle the country's deep social and economic problems head-on. Symbolic abstractions and evasions are more generally the norm, especially among those examples of the so-called 'Greek Weird Wave' which has made so many ripples since Yorgos Lanthimos' 2009 Dogtooth.