Review: Standing Aside, Watching

It's not necessarily a bad thing when, after the lights go down, you find yourself wondering what the heck you are watching. We have, in recent years, become used to a school of Greek cinema – taking in the brilliant films of Yorgos Lanthimos – that trades in oblique, existential games. Yorgos Servetas's second feature appears to offer the odd nod in that direction. The picture is punctuated with blank, static shots of landscapes, apartment buildings and unidentifiable structures that could comfortably play in an art gallery. Then again, the opening few scenes – in which Antigone (Marina Symeou), a failed actor returning home to a small town, sets out to find a job and re-establish friendships – have the underplayed simplicity of Iranian cinema. But the film's most conspicuous influence is the American western. Antigone arrives on a train, wanders into town and finds it engulfed in patriarchal tyranny. Crime is rampant. The heroine's best pal is in an abusive relationship with a prime hoodlum. Others (as the title has it) may stand aside and wait, but Antigone is not prepared to let it pass. What we end up with is a sedate art film that also has the quality of a feminist High Noon . Interesting stuff.