Starring
Athena Mathiou
Alexandros Vardaxoglou
Stavros Svigkos
Film Festival Review:
It’s the heat of Grecian summer. After a chance encounter, a female pimp, Monika (Athina Mathiou), and one of her male prostitutes, Alan (Stavros Svigos), invite Nikos (Alex Vardas) to stay with them in a crumbling mansion. In between theatre castings, erotic photoshoots and card games, love entangles the trio in an unpredictable, impossible situation.
Sometimes Nikos’ arms disappear like the statue of Venus. Venus in the Garden is a lush, illusory film, a decadent but bare portrait of an unstable reality, undefined outside of character and tricky within that. Much of the film takes place on a black soundstage, characters posed in mannered positions and configurations, an archly theatrical mirror to the supposed reality of the summer house. Which, if either, is the reality remains a mystery.
It also isn’t really the aim of Venus in the Garden to create a believable reality, it seems. While subtle echoes of the current eco-social climate in Europe could be pulled from the film, it seems more a sensuous object, a realisation of tangled sexual desire that twists and mixes together a melting pot of artistic reference points. Jarman rubs shoulders with Genet, decorating Alexandros of Antioch’s iconic statue. Telémachos Alexiou’s debut feature is a strikingly confident plethora of beautiful images, stringing together vibrating with the nervousness of the shifting sexual dynamics. He coolly pictures the glances and bursts of passion, anger, laughter; the sweaty unpredictability of a summer infatuation.
Tim Schenkl’s crisp, glowing black-and-white cinematography is definitely the film’s crowning glory. The monochrome visuals add to the unreality of the action, instantly crystallising ordinary movement into something more striking. It certainly helps, too, to have cast such beautiful actors; Vardas is the most sexualised of the three, but also the most powerless as he poses with black gloves masking most of his arms. Svigos’ more classic beauty positions him as an obvious object of desire. In such a queer film, Mathiou’s glam, sexy figure is less sexual than a feminine icon for gay men, like the portrait of Marilyn Monroe on their bedroom wall.
Clear, direct emotion does break through on two occasions in Venus in the Garden, and, naturally, these are the occasions when the image blossoms into colour. Viewers deserve to discover the conditions of these happenings, though, so we’ll say no more. Venus in the Garden may be one for the art crowd, but if you’re happy to take your narrative in mystical form, preferring a film of image and feeling over story, then this gorgeous mood piece has been well sculpted for your eyes.
Cast:TELÉMACHOS ALEXIOU
Tags:Alexandros Vardaxoglou, Athena Mathiou and Stavros Svigkos