Athanasia

Title: Athanasia
Director: Panos Karkanevatos
Cast: Greek (except Manuel, her father, played by an American?)
Language: In Greek with occasional English dialogue (possibly dubbed)
Release Date: December 2008

Should you see it? Perhaps. You will learn a great deal about the culture and the difficulties faced by Greek women who live in a culture dominated by tradition, expectation, and the rule of men.

In A Nutshell:

Delicately weaving the present and past, Karkanevatos tells the story of a young Greek-American woman--Angela--who returns to Greece to search for her true father. But the story is really about her mother--Athanasia--and the trials she has endured growing up on a small Greek island.

The movie begins in New York with scenes of pizza and bagel shops near an overhead train. An middle aged couple--Manuel and Athanasia--are met by their daughter Angela who takes them to their granddaughter's birthday party in a house in the suburbs-- the dream of many immigrant families. You feel the tension in the home and sense that Athanasia is brooding and absorbed in her own inner life. She is not especially happy about her daughter's marriage, but that plot is not taken further.

Shortly thereafter, Manuel (a photographer) meets Angela and shows pictures from the past. He also tells her that someone else is her real father. She seems astounded. I never understood the reason Manuel reveals this information at this point in time, but perhaps I missed something. Almost immediately Angela decides she needs to return to Greece and learn the real story about her father--and of course her mother. Manuel decides to accompany her, leaving Athanasia (played by the beautiful Stavroula Logothettis) home.

There seem to be hints that something is not quite right with Athanasia. In a very strange scene, she comes to pick up her grandchild after school. The child says she is not her grandmother. The administrator cannot find a note saying anyone else would pick up the child. She then calls the mother Angela (who happens to be in Greece) on her cell phone. Angela gives permission. But Athanasia gets lost walking the child home. I think the director/writer was trying to show us Athanasia's confusion but this is not developed either.

The action then moves back and forth between the current time period and some thirty years earlier (the time of Angela's birth). Marina Kalogirou plays the young Athanasia with sensitivity and passion. She is a quiet actress, using facial expressions to show that she has accepted her fate. In a tradition unknown to me, when the eldest child marries, the family gives away the home and surrounding land. This family has next to nothing, but when Athanasia's older sister Georgia marries Hristos, Georgia receives the family home--it is actually a single room built into the rocks of their village. Athanasia and her father trudge through the village, with all their belongings in a small sack carried by the stoic, resigned Athanasia.

Can you guess what happens? The father throws himself into the waters and Athanasia, having no place to go, comes calling at her sister's hut. Well, of course, they take her in. And this can lead to nothing good. Reminiscent of Tennessee Williams, "A Streetcar Named Desire," (Blanche DuBois comes to stay with her sister Stella and Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski, after the ancestral home is lost. Stella is pregnant. Stanley rapes Blanche, etc.), this movie follows an almost identical plot.

I will leave the ending for your movie-going pleasure. But eventually Angela learns the truth and seems to accept it.

Now, this isn't Tennessee Williams. But the insights about the struggles faced by the people of this small village offer some new ideas to mull over. The direction is sensitive, the scenes are realistic, and the two women who play Athanasia are quite strong actors.

So, if you find this film playing in your area, you might give it a try.