VERDICT: The outlawing of physical contact creates a cauldron of unexpressed sensuality for the burnished and browbeaten shipyard workers of Evi Kalogiropoulou’s eerie dystopian short.
Evi Kalogiropoulou apparently took inspiration for her short film On Xerxes’ Throne from her own childhood habit of watching the workers of the Perama shipyards, near Athens. What she remembers seeing there was a finely calibrated world of masculinity that could come crashing down if rocked by even an insinuation of homoeroticism. From this starting point, she has constructed a significantly more merciless and dystopian vision of the same scenario; one in which touching is entirely forbidden and, as such, every movement and every moment are infused with a longing for physical intimacy.
The authority here is invisible and mostly unexplained but the film’s narrator (Yorgos Mazonakis) lays out the rules for the audience – no touching! – and acts as the eyes and mouthpiece of the shadowy bosses. He observes the workers as they help to build luxury superyachts. He observes as they doze, half-dressed, in the unending sun. He observes as they sleep at night on bare mattresses laid out together. He is also the one who knows, immediately upon their arrival into this hermetic proto-erotic environment, that two newcomers are going to disrupt the delicate equilibrium.
Kalogiropoulou and her cinematographer, Evan Maragkoudakis, pace their shots deliberately, involving the viewer in the longueurs felt by the crew as they while away their time, watching bodies moving methodically around one another or else in languorous repose. In one moment, the desperate need for any kind of break in the chastity appears to devolve into allowing an accident to occur, just to witness someone physically feel something, even if it’s pain. In most instances, though, On Xerxes’ Throne feels like a sister film to Maryam Tafakory’s Nazarbazi – about the ban on showing people touching in Iranian cinema – where eyes on skin, or mutually touching objects, take on a specific frisson. The result is that traditional carnal mores become subsumed and sexuality now plays second fiddle to a deeper desire for contact, no matter the cost.
Director: Evi Kalogiropoulou
Cast: Yorgos Mazonakis, Angela Brousko, , Xenia Dania
Screenplay: Yorgos Teltzidis
Cinematography: Evan Maragkoudakis
Producer: Amanda Livanou
Editor: Yorgos Zafiris
Sound: Leandros Ntounis, Dimitris Demoirakos Music: Kid Moxie
Production company: Neda Film (Greece)
Venue: Le Semaine de la Critique, Cannes (Short Film Competition)
In Greek
15 minutes
