Written and Directed by Dimitris Bavellas
Starring Makis Papadimitriou, Michalis Sarantis & Anna Kalaitzidou
Rated PG-13
Runtime: 98 Mins
Available digitally January 17th

by Whitley Albury, Staff Writer

I truly do love road trip movies, and maybe it’s because the only “road trips” I’ve been on are family ones (including getting lost in West Virginia on the way to Cleveland) or semi-work related ones for music festivals. But there’s something so enjoyable about forced proximity stories for me. The forced bonding, the dumb arguments. It’s this specific type of fun that just really hits a happy spot in my brain.

Antonis (Makis Papadimitriou) and Christos (Michalis Sarantis) are best friends. They bonded over music (Antonis is the lead singer of an 8-bit punk band, Christos is a sound engineer) and their love of Laura Durand (Anna Kalaitzidou), a porn star from the late 90s who up and disappeared. The film opens with Christos getting an MRI while hallucinating that he sees Laura. Christos and Antonis both separately hallucinate Laura telling them to come find her. So they do.

The duo sets off on a cross country trip all around Greece, following a map given to them by Laura’s mysterious former manager, Vertigo (Danis Katranidis). And, as road trip movies are wont to do, things go awry.

While there’s certainly nothing wrong per se with the film, I just feel like I’ve seen this exact plotline before. There’s wild side characters who just add to the quirkiness of the story, but that’s all. They don’t add in any extra oomph to the story itself. They’re inconsequential. Beat for beat, we know exactly how the story is going to end. It’s just a nice addition to see the Greek countryside and some ruins every once in a while. The duo’s single-minded focus on Laura tends to get a bit frustrating after a point, as well. Antonis has a son at the beginning of the film, and then he’s just…never mentioned again. It’s also possible that some of the humor in parts were lost in translation or culturally.

I will say, I did greatly enjoy the scene in the punk flophouse. There’s a “legendary” band (meaning: legendary in-universe) playing and Christos just absolutely loses his mind over them. And there are some nice touches mixed in, like how Christos keeps rolling papers on him and he keeps rolling empty cigarettes. Both him and Antonis are very heartfelt characters, they’re just predictable. While watching the credits, I was surprised at how small the crew was, which also lends a bit of grit to the film, in my mind. There’s something about a scrappy crew that I truly adore. Overall, it’s a just fine road trip film. It’s worth watching if you like the style and if you want to watch a foreign film. Otherwise, it’s just a run of the mill story.

Pre-order the film now on iTunes here