Yorgos Zois presents a haunting and layered film on grief from a unique perspective from both the living and the dead in his sophomore feature film, Arcadia.
After going through the festival rounds with short films and a debut feature in Cannes and Venice, Yorgos Zois lands his sophomore feature at the 74th Berlinale in the Encounters section with his sorrowful tale on grief with Arcadia. Zois has worked in both peaks of Greek cinema of the 21st century, from being an assistant to Greece’s greatest filmmaker, Theo Angelopoulos on Dust of Time (2004), to acting in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Alps (2011). With experience and knowledge from Angelopoulos’ meditative slow cinema to the Greek New Wave movement in Lanthimos, Zois’ sophomore feature leans closer to Angelopoulos’ style, presenting a pensive reflection between the living and dead.
Opening to a mysterious accident of a car crashing over a bridge, former doctor, Yannis (Vangelis Mourikis) and his wife and neurologist, Katerina (Angeliki Papoulia) are called in due to one of the deceased being Yannis’ wife and the other, an unknown individual. This begins Yannis’ personal investigation of piecing together his wife’s death and discovering who this mystery man was in the car. Confusing at first, but it soon becomes apparent that Katerina is of the other world, ghostly integrated in the real world. She follows him as she doesn’t remember her life before her accident and in parallel, joins Yannis in investigating the cause of her walking amongst the living. Zois structures an introspective point of view from the two’s perspectives, re-visiting the past of the two’s relationship and the cause of her own death.
Shot near the seaside in Greece, Zois opts to show the melancholic aspects of the setting to enhance his story. Dark blue hues and the night sky enrich the setting to set the ominous tone, while Zois and co-writer Konstantina Kotzamani’s intricate screenplay fleshes out the character’s past and motivation. Yannis walks with a sullen, droopy face, balancing a mood contemplating the past and the present. Yannis and Katerina wander throughout the film, meeting crucial characters that begin to feel contrived, such as other wandering ghosts like a policeman’s dog’s history. Katerina is investigating herself to recall her memories and through encounters with others like her circumstances, she finds herself at the Arcadia, the bar where the past and present, living and dead collide, threading the loose ends of Yannis and Katerina’s troubling past.
In only his second feature, Zois steps forward in Greek cinema as an emerging voice, balancing parallel storylines with a unique approach in the co-written script with Kotzamani. The most admirable aspect of the film is Zois’ control on maintaining the somber tone due to the dreary atmosphere, allowing each character’s arc to excel. While the plot’s illogical nature may seem a bit convoluted at certain points, Zois manages to provide an insightful and thought-provoking introspection on grief from the dead’s perspective in a mystifying and puzzling fashion.
