Evdokia

I first saw Evdokia when very young and immediately blew me. Now even after more than twenty years I can still discover more, there is so much inside this great film by Damianos. The scenes one after the other are made to stir you deep inside and cause a deep impact. It is as it seems traditional for top Greek films to be frugal and elliptic but this one is like it came out from a piece of Aeschylus. The picture is as simple as it can be yet so profoundly deep - it is amazing. Great poetry.

If you're Greek, I'm sure you know the infamous zeibekiko, written for the movie by Manos Loizos. But the rest of the movie remains hardly known to the big public. Since recently, it was impossible to get a copy from the movie. A newspaper gave it on DVD and so some of us were able to see it, finally. It was worth it.

Alexis Damianos, the director, has only directed three movies. His job in "Evdokia" is excellent. It's realism, but with a great deal of naturalism. It's a story of love, between a young prostitute and a soldier. Their relationship is based on sex -the erotic scenes are rather brutal- and the general spirit of the movie isn't very pleasant. The wild nature that surrounds the characters justifies the cause: It's a hard life, and the thin line between love and death is hardly visible. The most memorable scene, after all, is the one of the excursion in the wild nature. The heroes play with death so easily, as if he didn't matter. Remember: It's the dictatorship-era in Greece (1967-1974).

You might be disappointed by the performances -she's OK, he's really awful, except from the one by K. Agagiotou -she plays an old prostitute. The sound dubbing is also notably bad. But, let's be cool for a moment, it's still the 70s, and this is a really low-budget effort. I think it's at least a very good token of what Greek cinematography could have been, if the circumstances hadn't been the same.

Few people in Greece have actually seen this movie but almost everyone knows it due to the brilliant score by Manos Loizos. It's a very low budget movie, especially the sound dubbing is ludicrous, but nevertheless it still succeeds at being realistic and cruel. Maria Vassiliou is quite good while George Koutouzis is annoying and fake.

I consider this movie an interesting experimentation related to love, produced during the years of military coup in Greece.

Images provided by Damianos are excellent. However, you may be deeply disappointed with the actors' performances.

Yet such kind of movies are a unique representation of the Greek symbolic culture.

For instance Damianos for several minutes shows an excursion in the mountain, with characters engaged in a dangerous behavior. A speeding motorbike, a woman in danger to fall from a cliff. But nevertheless the characters survive. Danger is not meant to be the main element, it is meant to be an indication of the false belief of power related to love (my interpretation). Then you may want to extend such phrase to the entire human condition.

The plot is about 2 people, behaving in contradiction to society's norms. One of them, recruited by the army, - a figure with bad connotations during the years of coup in Greece - the other, a prostitute. Again, this movie is not interested in depicting the elite class, but two common people stripped of, of any ideology, any conscious intention, guided primarily by their desires and feelings. Such behavior was bound to be destructive.

In summary, an excellent movie which is not meant to be accepted passively, but to be interpreted. Like similar movies of the period, is meant to unravel a semantic puzzle for you to solve.

Many people who seem not to like originality and non-happy endings, are trashing this movie whilst others (amongst them myself) consider it one of the most important movie of the Greek cinematography. The movie is very very low budget but this doesn't take away from the wonderful social critic, the very original direction and the amazing performances of most actors. When coupled with the beautiful music of Manos Loizos, it makes a movie really worth watching. The story as well as the character development is very well presented.

It is also worth mentioning that the two main protagonists are amateurs. George, was a construction worker that was found by the director working in a construction yard, while Evdokia (Maria Vassiliou) was found by the director's wife while browsing through a family photo album. The girl was born in England by Greek parents and at that time didn't speak Greek. Thus the need to dub the movie.

Another interesting fact was that the main theme of the movie was supposed to have lyrics. But when Lefteris Papadopoulos (the lyrics writer) listened to the music he said that such music doesn't need lyrics because it speaks by itself.

I really do recommend this movie.