Plato's academy

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Plato's academy

Akadimia Platonos (Greece-Germany)

Director: Philippos Tsitos

In Athens’ Plato’s Academy District., there is a small, quiet junction with three tobacco stores and a dog. Stavros owns one of the stores. His wife has left him and refuses to come back; and he must care for his sick mother. The favorite hobby of the three tobacconists is counting Chinese immigrants, who are setting up their shop across the street and appear to multiply by the day. They only stop counting if an Albanian goes past them. Then, they bet on whether the dog will bark at the Albanian or not. That is how they spend their time, idly and merrily, watching life go by outside their stores. However, Stavros is constantly worried, suffers from insomnia, and is unable to pinpoint what is wrong. Until one day, an Albanian, who goes past the three men (and gets barked at by the dog), recognizes Stavros' mother as his own long-lost mother.

With: Antonis Kafetzopoulos, Anastas Kozdine, Titika Saringouli, Giorgos Souxes, Konstantinos Koronaios, Panayiotis Stamatakis, Maria Zorba.

Awards:

Leopard for Best Actor, Ecumenical Jury First Prize,Third Youth Jury Prize, 2009

Locarno International Film Festival

Best Movie Award, 2009

Tirana International Film Festival

A quartet of Greek wastrels are forced to confront their prejudices in "Plato's Academy," a weak comedy with few laughs and little insight. In his follow-up to Berlin competish pic "My Sweet Home," sophomore helmer Filippos Tsitos revisits immigration issues, but this time he's mired in a strictly smallscreen format devoid of complex characterization. Meant to combat bigotry, the anemic script merely recycles stereotypes and lets everyone go home feeling comfortable but not transformed. It's strictly for local screens and Hellenic ancillary.

Sad-sack slacker Stavros (Antonis Kafetzopoulos) is in a funk: His mother (Titika Saringouli) is senile, his wife (Maria Zorba) divorced him and he can't sleep. He wiles away the time with three layabouts, sitting outside their tobacco shops on a nondescript Athens corner and laughing at a dog trained to bark only at Albanians. When Albanian handyman Marenglen (Anastas Kozdine) turns up, Stavros' mom turns lucid, spouting fluent Albanian and revealing her hidden background, claiming Marenglen is the older son she had to abandon when fleeing to Greece. Marenglen remains a cipher, while nameless busy-bee Chinese workers are mere window dressing. Visuals are uniformly flat.

By JAY WEISSBERG

Camera (color, HD-to-35mm), Polidefkis Kirlidis; editor, Dimitris Peponis; music, Enstro; production designer, Spyros Laskaris; costume designer, Christina Chantzaridou. Reviewed at Locarno Film Festival (competing), Aug. 13, 2009. Greek, Albanian dialogue. Running time: 103 MIN.

Published in Film Festival 2010

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