Writer and Director : Sofia Exarchou
Animal, a new feature by Greek writer and director, Sofia Exarchou, opens at the Raindance Festival. The Greek island where it takes place is not, however, a paradise of white houses, family tavernas and clear blue sea. The setting rather is a distinctly scuzzy holiday resort, cut off from a marshy beach by chicken wire. Here holiday makers are endlessly plied with alcohol and offered round-the-clock adult entertainment by a group of ‘animateurs’ or entertainers. Their role is to keep up the party mood, schmoozing the guests and teaching them to dance sexily.
Exarchou keeps narrative in the background, focusing rather on a series of truncated scenes in which the animateurs are variously backstage making up, performing seductively on stage, or caught in sullen silence, their faces frozen in discontent. The central character is Kalia, played with subtlety by Dimitra Vlagopoulou She’s been playing this game for years and can still cut it. But the endless role-playing is clearly taking its toll. We watch a joyless sex scene in which her lover, the mullet-sporting Simos (Ahillieas Hariskos) drunkenly makes love to her. But only we can see the mixture of boredom and sorrow in her eyes. They have a sweet little girl who seems untouched by the squalor in which she is growing up. There’s a funny scene in which the child solemnly hands out various prosthetic breasts to the performers, sizing up with a professional eye the size each needs.
We’re not taken far into this family story. Possibly the child is a reminder of the innocent child Kalia must once have been. There is another reminder of this in the character of the enigmatic Eva (a fascinating performance by Flomaria Papadaki). Eva is underage – only seventeen when the film starts. She’s from Poland and has run away. We learn little else, but at rest her melancholy face is eloquent. On the dance floor, however, she can transform herself into the decadent seductress of men’s dreams. But, the film suggests, sex is not what she’s after. There’s another chilling scene which parallels the previous one in which Eva allows another performer to have sex with her. Again the camera captures her distaste.
Kalia’s signature song is Yes sir, I can boogie. It hints at her need to boogie all night long to blot out the melancholy of her existence. After a show, she regularly cadges a motorbike ride into town to carry on drinking and dancing at various tourist bars. Every so often, she seduces a foreign tourist, usually taking him to an unappealing beach before brushing off the sand and walking sadly back to her room on the compound.
Why does she do it? It’s not a lifestyle that can be sustained for ever. She falls onto broken glass on the dancefloor and sustains a deep cut. But she gamely covers it up and boogies on. But the gaping wound refuses to heal. There’s a shocking scene when she attempts to fix it with a staple gun. We know it can only be a matter of time before her life breaks down. Meanwhile Eva’s story stays in the background.
Does the title Animal refer to the animal-like nature of those who prey on the performers? Or are they themselves creatures, caged and on display, like the tank of grey fish the camera returns to at intervals? There’s a certain similiarity between this film and Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex, but the squalor of this latter film about British teenagers on an all-in holiday at another cheapo European resort is thoughtfully probed, ultimately becoming both a story of lost innocence and of the ongoing issue of sexual consent. In comparison, Sofia Exarchou’s Animal is teasingly opaque.
Animal is screening at the Raindance Film Festival runs from 19 – 28 June in London cinemas.
