‘Meat’: Thessaloniki Review

Dir: Dimitris Nakos. Greece. 2024. 104mins

Poisonous households could also be a story as previous as time, however author/director Dimitris Nakos spices his debut with the small city hearsay mill in his fashionable Greek tragedy. Nakos units a assured tempo, though his need to create depth with excitable handheld camerawork and excessive quantity interactions is usually counterproductive.

Cinematographer Giorgos Valsamis’ work is so hyperactive that it dangers producing movement illness

Meat featured in Thessaloniki Movie Pageant’s Agora works in progress part final yr and now joins its Worldwide Competitors after making its world premiere in Toronto. It will likely be distributed in Greece by Feelgood Leisure and, whereas the acquainted themes may make it a more durable promote to distributors elsewhere, it has lots to commend it to additional festivals. 

Center-aged Takis (Akyllas Karazisis) is within the temper to have fun. He’s about to reopen his butcher’s store after two years of closure and never even a shouting match along with his ex-con neighbour (Dimitris Xanthopoulos) over a protracted operating land dispute goes to take the shine off the second. Takis and his spouse Eleni (Maria Kallimani) have loads of causes to be assured about his store’s opening. Issues usually go Takis’ approach, not least as a result of he is aware of find out how to grease palms, like these of native cop Giorgos (Giorgos Symeonidis), so that individuals look the opposite approach with regards to the unlawful slaughterhouse he has on his land. 

The butcher can also be not a person who suffers fools gladly. That features his son Pavlos (Pavlos Iordanopoulos), who he views as largely inept – particularly compared to the exhausting working and equally aged Christos (Kostas Nikouli), an Albanian who has lengthy come to be considered as a part of the household.

When, on opening evening, the state of affairs flares up on the cottage the place Christos lives, a criminal offense is dedicated that can rot the household from the within out. Nakos has a knack for household dynamics, permitting Pavlos’ broody glowering in response to Takis converse louder than any argument. His father’s opprobrium serves solely to bolster his mom’s protecting instincts, whereas additional hints of arrested growth are steered by Pavlos’s bed room, the place footballers are nonetheless kicking about on the curtains from his childhood.

Christos is relatively alone, his mom only a voice over the phone, which is simply one of many the explanation why he feels indebted to Takis and his household. For him, this small city nonetheless represents alternative, whereas his girlfriend (Natalia Swift) can’t wait to go away for town. Christos’ gratitude, nevertheless, will not be sufficient, and the query of whether or not blood is thicker than water hangs over the motion because the crime turns into more and more troublesome to cowl up. 

Nakos progressively reveals the household’s place throughout the neighborhood, together with the ingrained prejudice in the direction of Christos and the way in which by which whispers of guilt can journey quicker than the wind. Takis, who as soon as considered the neighborhood as docile and simply herded sheep, now realises it holds loads of wolves. This isn’t only a query of energy, however of cash as a corrupting drive.

The strategy of utilizing a handheld digicam so as to add kinetic vitality to the household’s arguments is efficient, however cinematographer Giorgos Valsamis’ work is so hyperactive that it dangers producing movement illness. With the digicam being regularly skittish, Nakos additionally leaves himself with nowhere additional to go when he needs to amp issues up. Happily, the highly effective rating from Konstantinos Pistiolis, which employs people music devices together with bagpipes and the lavta, delivers depth in additional palatable doses. And when the digicam does take a breather, the actors ship loads of meaty performances; significantly Nikouli and Iordanopoulos, who deliver a turbulent mixture of friendship and rivalry to the lads’s relationship and stay unpredictable to the final.