Chevalier
Director: Athina Rachel Tsangari
Talent: Vangelis Mourikis, Nikos Orphanos, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos, Panos Koronis
Released: 22nd July
Greece, in ancient times the cradle of Western civilisation, today successfully exports a particular brand of weird, sardonic cinema whose deadpan proves simply irresistible to contemporary arthouse audiences. Chevalier joins 2010’s Attenberg (also directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari) and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth (2009) and The Lobster (2015) as exemplars of this new Greek wave of the cinematic arch. In it, a group of professional-class men on a yachting trip compete with one another to find out who is “the best in general”, a competition involving the rigorous appraisal and numerical rating of each other’s every action for the duration of their journey. Coffee serving preferences are logged, ringtones compared, flat-pack shelving units competitively assembled, and so on.
It’s a funny if somewhat repetitive take on the fragility of white-collar masculine identity, ironically somewhat compromised by the absence of any stand-out or sympathetic figure amongst its entirely male cast. The film is aesthetically notable also for the perverse use of the Futura typeface for its subtitles. Throwaway, but fun.
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
