I read somewhere that Greece originally submitted Dogtooth to the Academy Awards this year but changed their mind and sent this instead. Since I've seen both Dogtooth and Strella I'm completely baffled by this decision because this is one of those movies that has you thinking it must have been the only movie made in that country that year, which it obviously wasn't. This tedious period piece plays like the worst installment of Masterpiece Theater never made. Aside from being incredibly drawn out and uninteresting, it also seems like it was shot on a camcorder. The story involves a bunch of rich, boring assholes on the island of Corfu. It seems to take place around the beginning of the last century and it seems like the aristocracy is withering away and being replaced by a seemingly unsavory bourgeoisie. The main event in the movie is the family basically forcing their elder daughter to marry this slimy doctor who went out and bought up all the father's IOU's. The other daughter is rebellious and hot to trot. The elder son is a shiftless lawyer in a loveless affair with a woman married to a much older, wealthy man. The younger son is a gambler and a thief and not really different than rich people anywhere in his extreme self-centeredness. The mother is likable enough. I suppose the women in general are likable enough, possibly because they're so broadly drawn. I saw it in a theater packed to the rafters with Greeks and they seemed to like it pretty well. Of course, Greek people seem to like anything Greek as a matter of principle, in my experience. D
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