email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

KARLOVY VARY 2013

September: As lonely as a dog

by 

- Greek director Penny Panayotopoulou returns after a 10-year absence with a variation on the theme of solitude and the fragility of human relationships.

A beautiful European venture, this coproduction between Greece and Germany benefitted from the Balkan Script Development Fund in 2010 before taking part the following year in the Crossroads Co-production Forum organized as part of the Thessalonica Festival. In 2012, its director, Penny Panayotopoulou, attended Work in Progress at the Festival des Arcs where the project attracted the attention of Karel Och who selected the film in competition for the 48th KarloVy Vary International Film Festival.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

“You talk to him as if he were a human being...”

Anna (Kora Karvouni), in her thirties, lives in a small apartment in which she has a fusional relationship with her dog, Manu, to whom she goes as far as to read children’s books at night. After Manu dies, she gets closer to Sofia (Maria Skoula) and her family to get over her loneliness, but her attempts to communicate her pain turn to obsession. Soon, she begins to demand the acceptance and love that she does not receive from her own absent family, but unlike Manu, Anna’s neighbours do not need the wheezy affection that make Anna a parasite...

September [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
 is a variation on the theme of isolation seen as a disease. “You can't bear loneliness”, says the mother to her husband (Nikos Diamantis), who is in fact a doctor; though this affliction exists on several levels in this film. It is firstly about the very strong bond between an adult and her pet, like a couple isolated from the rest of the world. Then, when Anna finds herself literally alone, she cannot connect with her neighbours who themselves live in a sort of emotional autarky. In the third act, Anna meets a lone traveller (Christos Stergioglou, also seen in The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Elina Psykou
film profile
]
) who desperately attempts to initiate a dialogue with her, but she will paradoxically end all communications before in turn being “found” by an abandoned animal who represents hope for a new union.

The screenplay was written by the director after an absence of nearly 10 years which separate this film from her last, Hard Goodbyes: My FatherSeptember benefits from well-tended cinematography and close-ups portraying the intimacy of actors with whom spectators will have no trouble identifying, especially if they own a pet... 

 

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy