Winona

I really wanted to watch this one. The Boy (the director, acotr and the man behind the soundtrack is Alexandros Voulgaris, who is also a Greek singer called "The Boy". I learned about his songs the summer that past and I started taking a good look at his recent work and although it is totally weird and alienating, it was so fascinating and captivating, underneath the quircky lyrics and complex melody, there lied an honest person with a vision and a heart. That was what I got from his recent film, Winona, a story about 4 girls that spend their day in the beach doing what 4 girls usually do-tlak, play, sing , enjoy, swim, laugh and do dump things. I love this film. It just...it's such a lovely and easy-going film to seat through and it is a unique emotional journey.

Firslty, the visual storytelling. The movie was shot with a kodak 16mm film using film and it looks gorgeous. This movie manages to master the art of portraying a certain time at a certain season with certain people. This film IS summer anc I have not seen any other film portraying the colours and the melancholy of summer so vividly before ( ok , maybe Call me by your name). The sun, the sand, the sea, the clouds , the flowers, its texture is so soft and beatiful.

The dialogue is pretty lose from start to finish, but that's not bad at all. It's point is to portray a summer day and the relationships of the characters. It feels really playful and fun evne if there is no actual order of events or a clear view of the story, but that offers for a more relaxing movie experience. The dialogue blends fantasy with reality and it's vastly humorous and funny. It is an astonisihngly new way of blending hypothetical fantasieswhile telling a story. But, under the fantasy-based dialogue lies a sadness and this applies to the film in general. It is fun and has the summer shine, but it is also a melancholic pitcure and a haunting memoir of conversations, laughs, sadness,wonder and loss.

I wathced this film at Thessaloniki International Film Festival and the director and the cast were there to share their experience and answer to our questions. He said that the film has plenty of music because he really loves musical adn he lasways wanted to make one and although this movie is not a musical, musc is always present and adds a certain feeling to every scene. The songs are great and the score is magical. Also, the director is actually a really humble and cool guy. I asked for an autograph and he was so humble that he did not want to sign and I had plenty of conversaitons with him and he is really authentic and true and interesting. I look forward to experiencing more of his films- I actually watched Pink and it was really good and personal- and to his music and I believe htat Greek films should become more known to the public because there a lot of inspiring voices out there that need to be heard and The Boy is no exception. What a perfect day!

Winona is shiny, gorgeous, crispy, melancholic, salty and sad See it with sun-glasses and while making castles on the sand

I wanted to add extra stars to Winona, the movie... People in the comments are getting a bit harsh. Sometimes the question is, why do you watch movies? Personally, I crave emotions-and Winona really gave me that! Some people comment that all of this was nonsense... but so is our everyday life: a break from routine, a form of exploration, a question and, at the same time, an answer to our identity. I think this movie is pure, not pretentious. More than that, movies are not meant to give us a precise mirror of our lives, but to give us reasons to daydream and expand our headspaces. Also, I believe that before writing a critique, it's better to have a full picture of the filmography and the artist's work.✨✨✨✨

Nonsensical dialogues, unbelievably slow and almost like watching a (bad) Lanthimos film. The acting was decent - maybe even it was quite limited due to weak plot.

Then you have the fact that the movie feels EXTREMELY pretentious. What I mean by that is at first that it's filmed in 2019, on 16mm film. Well ok, it's possible but to prove what?

Also it's completely unclear when does the film take place. Is it the 80's, the 90's or in 2019? We see an analog camera, a very old radio/cassette player, but at the same time a modern house on the hill. If it's set in 2019, what's with all this hipster aesthetic with the retro glasses and the retro tech?

To sum up the steps: Step 1: Get some young pretty actresses Step 3: Make them memorise all Woody Allen movies (insert Allen tribute here) Step 2: Let them (mainly) improvise Step 4: Add a few almost sexual and other provocative scenes Step 5: ???

Step 6: Profit

Clearly a film made on a budget - nothing wrong with that - but it just feels that it doesn't have what it takes to make you get absorbed.

Having a recognised director father does not mean that anyone can also become a director as well - it doesn't work like any other family business.

Well if you want to call it that. Maybe I should have gone with "the sisters with the traveling beach" - but then again I don't think the movie needs a pun or a (misguided) reference to the travelling pants sage - which I am probably the least qualified person to make anyway.

Long introduction and not actually saying much - well that is sort of a great description of what you can expect from this movie. A movie that was apparently shot on 16mm (something that is either very important to you or you are just going to find the "video quality" to be of a lesser quality) ... and a movie that some might want to compare to earlier works of Lanthimos. If you are one of those, I hope you don't have fallen over yourself in praise of the other director and categorizing this as a bad movie.

Whatever you may think of the slow plot and really snail pace this has, the dialogs that seem to lead nowhere and without aim ... it is a day at the beach. Not any day and we can feel there is something dark and sinister those girls try to repress ... not sure if will be entirely clear in the end for most ... and no it has nothing to do with tourism, although I acknowledge and applaud that small commentary the movie makes.

Other than what I already have mentioned, the four women are really good. Something I for once did not feel with the earlier work of Lanthimos - it seemed he was happy with non actors. This on the other hand has some strong contenders. So even if you are not into the movie itself, you can't deny how good the acting is. Even more so, considering it feels like there was no actual dialog script - or they made most of it up. Which may be true or not - have not checked, but it feels improvised for sure. Not trying to diss the director - he may have given them a safe space to create on their own. Of course some may feel that this can be a reason why this feels aimless sometimes.

Still looking forward to what the director and the cast is coming up in the future. They deserve to make more stuff and we deserve to get to see more of their stuff.

Pretentious lines, soulless recital of dialogue (which may perhaps work in Giorgos Lanthimos' films but in this case it just feels cheap), pop-culture references and name-dropping just for the sake of it. Just because the colours look pretty it doesn't necessarily mean that this films conveys the atmosphere and spirit of a lazy summer day. Just because something is shot on 16mm film, it doesn't equal great filmmaking. Definitely not worth sitting through this so you can get a semblance of plot for the last 15 or so minutes.