A Dionysian orgy of sex, drugs and adolescent self-indulgence, Bastards is a steaming hot mess of a movie, jarringly pretentious and fatally in love with itself, but not without stylistic flair and mildly transgressive thrills. A collaborative effort between director Nikos Pastras and a cast of young acting students drawn from Athens Conservatory Drama School, this vibrant ensemble piece is clearly indebted to shock-driven, youth-focussed directors like Larry Clark, Harmony Korine and Gaspar Noé , but with less purpose or substance than any of them. Fresh from its prize-winning premiere at Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Pastras’ overcooked debut feature could grab wider attention, especially from festivals and open-minded platforms devoted to pulpy cult cinema. It certainly has sparky energy, swaggering ambition and an attention-grabbing finale in its favour.
Bastards take place at a sunny holiday villa in rural Greece, where 10 young wannabe rebels have gathered to escape the adult world and create their own revolutionary, non-binary, polyamorous utopia. These krazy kidz lay out their manifesto in an opening montage, breaking the fourth wall with a barrage of declamatory poetic statements about their bold intentions to shake off mainstream society’s chains. “We will love each other until hatred, and hate each other until love,” one declares. “We’ll be able to choose between 10 different genders and change them at will,” another proclaims. At first it seems like Pastras is satirising the self-infatuated pomposity of entitled millennial types from an older and more cynical perspective, but his intentions become harder to read as the scrambled narrative unfolds.
Mostly improvised by cast and director on set, Bastards is a loose patchwork of vignettes, sketches and monologues. Inevitably, with a house full of attractive young students letting their overheated imaginations run wild, these repetitive mini-dramas lean heavily towards getting stoned, getting naked, and having wild sex marathons in gloopy lakes of bodily fluid. Even more predictably, the enticing “pansexual and queer universe” that Pastras laid out in an early pitch for the film is filtered very much through a straight male gaze. The graphic nudity is here is almost entirely female, for example, with lesbian desire featured far more prominently than coy hints of gay male sex. For all its fashionably gender-fluid poses and taboo-busting riffs on incest, menstrual blood and more, this voyeuristic marathon is more conventional and less shocking than it aspires to be.
With its goofy dance routines, soul-baring confessions and overall air of bad teenage poetry, Bastards feels at times like a nihilistic porno-punk version of The Breakfast Club (1985). Which may sound like a joke, but Pastras cites the John Hughes high-school classic as a key influences alongside Terence Mallick’s Badlands (1973), Lars Von Trier’s Idiots (1998)and Gaspar Noé’s Climax (2018). These are big shoes to fill, and they remain resolutely unfilled here. Although there are darkly funny and sharply observed touches, the overall effect is masturbatory, quite literally in recurring scenes of vigorous frottage. Ultimately, Pastras makes the same mistake that Hughes did, by taking his self-important adolescent anti-heroes as seriously as they take themselves.
That said, one factor that saves Bastards from sinking into total navel-hazing tedium is its dynamic visual style, zippy and colorful, like an Edgar Wright parody of a teen-horror movie. The use of music is strong too, with lush classical pieces juxtaposed against caustic punk-pop songs by Greek musician Mazoha, aka Jimmy Polioudis. In narrative terms, this rambling sprawl of half-baked ideas is also partly redeemed by its creeping undertow of dystopian dread. Over time, the idealistic zeal and sunny hedonism of this cult-like collective is slowly poisoned by bitching, betrayal, cruel power games and occasional bursts of violence, which make it far more realistic and dramatically engaging.
Arriving out of the blue, the spectacular final twist serves as a darkly satirical allegory for inter-generational conflict, recalling some classic cult movies of yesteryear. The uncompromising climaxes of Lindsay Anderson’s revolutionary fantasy If.. (1968) or Antonioni’s sour counterculture fable Zabriskie Point (1970) come to mind. If only the rest of Bastards had lived up to this inspired coda, which almost feels like its own stand-alone short film. But it does at least suggest that, with a little more focus and a little less self-indulgence, Pastras may yet prove himself an original screen talent with some sharper, deeper critical insights to offer.
Director, editing: Nikos Pastras
Screenwriters:Nikos Pastras, Natalia Swift, Zacharias Wella, Aphrodite Kapokaki, Eriphyle Kitzoglou, Christina Kipreou, Mario Banoushi, Yorgos Boufidis, Katerina Daliani, Christos Poulos-Renesis, Yannis Tomazos
Cast: Cast: Natalia Swift, Zacharias Wella, Aphrodite Kapokaki, Eriphyle Kitzoglou, Christina Kipreou, Mario Banoushi, Yorgos Boufidis, Katerina Daliani, Christos Poulos-Renesis, Yannis Tomazos
Cinematography: Petros Nousias
Music: Mazoha
Costumes, make-up: Natalia Swift
Producers: Nicholas Alavanos, Nikos Pastras
Production company, world sales: Filmiki (Greece)
Venue: Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Film Forward Competition)
In Greek
94 minutes
