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Moon, 66 Questions (Jacqueline Lentzou, 2021)
🕑 Added 2021-05-14 04:55:18 +0000 UTC
As has been the case with several of this year's New Directors / New Films selections, Moon, 66 Questions is a bit frustrating, since it seems to promise much more than it delivers. To be a bit more specific, first-time feature director Jacqueline Lentzou ends her film on a poignant if inevitable note, and this frank expression of emotion buys Moon some retroactive goodwill, especially considering just how withholding it has been up to that point.
On a purely narrative level, Moon is a film about rapproachement between an adult daughter, Artemis (Sofia Kokkali) and her stern, distant father Paris (Lazaros Georgakopoulos). Artemis is called back home from Athens to care for Paris, whose multiple sclerosis has degenerated to the point that he can no longer live alone safely. It should be stated outright that Georgakopoulos does not have MS, so for those who object to such performances, this is not the film for you. That said, he does a fine job conveying both the physical limitations caused by the disease, and his deep anger at having to rely on Artemis for his basic needs.
This scenario has all the makings for a blatant tearjerker, but Lentzou is aiming for something a bit more rigid. She doesn't fully adopt the "New Greek Weird" trappings of Lanthimos or Tsangari, with their combination of formal rigor and black humor. In fact, Lentzou doesn't go in any particular discernible direction, often trying whatever she can think of: disorienting close-ups, geometrical overhead shots, and a recurring motif of very degrading home videos from the late 80s, seemingly there to offer some kind of evidentiary backstory to exactly how Artemis and Paris became estranged. They don't really do that, although they provide some helpful visual texture.
What is actually most intriguing about Moon is Lentzou's decision to focus much more on Artemis and her inner life than on either Paris or, really, their relationship. A lot of the time, Kokkali plays the character in a manner that can only be described as bratty. She is petulant, and resents her new duties, but she acts out in a way that is more befitting a teenager. This speaks to the common tendency to revert to childhood patterns when reentering the parental sphere. The fact that her attitude is so inappropriate under the circumstances only goes to show how much damage there is to be repaired.
It's unfortunate that Lentzou's thematic approach is so schematic. For example, Artemis reacts to her father's limited mobility by having private moments of impromptu dancing, or using her able body to mimic his constricted movements. It's clear she fears becoming her father, but Lentzou's depiction of those fears, a conjunction of the psychological and the genetic, feels very much like a literary device. Similarly, the coldness with which Paris treated Artemis in her youth is explained with precisely one key family revelation, which suggests that human beings, or at least these human beings, are infinitely simple, processing loss and betrayal in neat, one-to-one correlations. Explain the one, and the other evaporates.
There's a lot of promise here, but at times Moon, 66 Questions (the title is never explained, by the way) seems besotted with its own ideas, failing to articulate them into a satisfying whole. By the same token, Kokkali has an offbeat charisma that recalls Ariane Labed or, perhaps, Jen Psaki. Thank you, I will be taking no more questions.
Comments
I was very taken with her Hector Malot short, though a debut feature is obviously always a different beast.
