Epiheirisis Apollon

"Apollo goes on holidays" is one of the most beautiful Greek films ever made. Very handsome actors (Elena Nathanael, Thomas Fritsch), lovely Greek music, wonderful Greek places. The whole movie is like a Greek music postcard. The best tourist promotion or advertisement for Greece. A love story set in a very beautiful location. A pretty girl and a blonde prince. Like a dream, like a fairy tale. The movie is full of innocence and romanticism, full of blue sea, blue sky and hot Summer sun. Surely a beautiful movie.

What a beautiful fairytale! Although, nobody can believe the basic story, this is an enjoyable film. Helen Nathanail, more beautiful than ever, stars as a guide for a group of tourist. There she meets Tomas Fritch, a handsome blonde man. They fall in love. What she does not know, that we do know from the fist moment, is that T.F is a prince who came in Greece for a formal visit. I know...I know...It sounds silly. But the couple is wonderful, the music of Vaggelis Papathanasiou and Giannis Markopoulos excellent, the naivity of the script can be easily forgotten when you see the chemistry that they do have on the screen. You may say that it is the Greek Roman Holiday, and that the role of A.Hepburn is played now from a male star. It's very good. Not perfect, because the next day you will not remember a thing from that film, but it is sweet and naive, as we should be sometimes.

This is actually a bad movie yet beautifully made. The story is as naive as it gets, which can be quite disturbing at times, but the viewer gets immediately carried away by the wonderful pictures of Greece and the nearly breathtaking music of Vaggelis Papathanasiou and Giannis Markopoulos, forgetting all about the plot. The film looks more like an attempt to promote Greek tourism, emphasizing picturesque landscapes and monuments rather than the characters which are built upon stereotypes and presented in a shallow way. Elena, a Mediterranean beauty who works as a tourist guide meets Jan, a good-looking and cheerful blond guy who also happens to be the prince of some unidentified northern European country, a fact that - surprise! - Elena ignores. Stunning Elena Nathanail and German actor Thomas Fritsch, former teen idol in his country, embody the main characters who experience a summer romance with the necessary touch of folklore. The acting is poor but that doesn't really matter as the film was meant to be some sort of travel documentary about Greece, although it has no such value anymore, unless you have a time machine and you can go back to the 1960s. Watch it for the soundtrack, the sceneries and the pretty faces but don't bother if you're looking for something more than that.