Direction: Christos Nikou
Country: Greece
Apples, the intriguing feature debut by the up-and-coming Greek director Christos Nikou, who worked as an assistant director for Yorgos Lanthimos in Dogtooth (2009) and Richard Linklater in Before Midnight (2013), flows with offbeat quirkiness and deadpan humor, doling out more in terms of emotion than I was expecting at an early stage.
The film’s nature and pace won’t rocket you to the edge of your seat but offers something deeper than just a mere laconic examination of memory. Posing interesting questions about identity, relationships and loss, the film takes some deciphering, but attentive viewers will take tiny bits of dialogue as hints for the puzzle until the final twist is tossed at us, giving a proper meaning to the story.
The mood and style are primarily reminiscent of Lanthimos’ The Lobster but there’s some of Wes Anderson’s melancholy humor and Quentin Dupieux's absurdity thrown in the mix. Yet, Nikou finds his own beat, making it less dystopian and ‘self-sabotaged’ by the inscrutable central character, Aris (Aris Servetalis). The latter lost his memory due to - imagine! - a worldwide pandemic, giving the impression of being totally out of sync of his true feelings. This avid apple-eater gladly joins the governmental New Identity Program, which serves to give him a ‘new life’ - new experiences, new memories. He eventually forges an atypical relationship packed with peculiar episodes with an amnesiac woman, Anna (Sofia Georgovasili).
Although narratively opaque for most of the time, which makes us constantly aware of not seeing the whole picture, Apples is a very clever film. Bizarre indeed, but ultimately so simple at its core.
