Film review: At Vancouver Greek Film Festival, Animal captures the grittier side of resort life
Sofia Exarchou’s compelling and heartbreaking look at the performers hired to dance, sing, and run karaoke and bingo games for tourists
The riveting Dimitra Vlagopoulou plays aging dancer Kalia in Animal.
The Cinematheque presents Animal as part of the Vancouver Greek Film Festival on June 27 at 6:30 pm
WRITER-DIRECTOR SOFIA Exarchou’s engrossing yet heartbreaking Animal inhabits the grinding reality behind postcard Greek Island vacations.
It’s a world where faux-Doric poolside pillars come out of plastic wrap for high season, and three-star-resort entertainers recycle sequined outfits and drink from plastic cups till dawn on the locals’ seedier beachfronts, occasionally hooking up in the sand.
Everything in this place where people go to party is tinged with pain. The film turns a night-club foam party into a surrealist nightmare, and features the most depressing karaoke version of “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie” that you will ever encounter.
This melancholic, expressively shot entry in this year’s Vancouver Greek Film Festival centres on Kalia (the remarkable Dimitra Vlagopoulou), one of the “animateurs” hired to dance, sing, and run karaoke and bingo games for tourists. With her overbleached hair, too-sinewy body, and weary eyes, she’s starting to age out of the business—but has no option but to paste on a fake smile and dance.
Sometimes she and her fellow performers have to take on more demeaning work—say, twerking and grinding on each other at the island’s all-night clubs, while paid hype men egg them on in broken English. “Shake it till you make it!” one barks into his microphone—an order that takes on ironic new meaning in this industry that holds no promise or prospects. When Kalia seriously injures herself at a foam party, no one even notices as the celebration rages on around her.
Amid the perfomers’ dysfunctional, circus-style chosen family is newcomer Eva (Flomaria Papadaki)—a 17-year-old Polish runaway who can see her future directly in Kalia. But their relationship is complex, Kalia too tired or numb to exactly nurture or protect the younger dancer, Eva resigned to the humiliations that await. Both women have clearly run away to resort entertainment to escape trauma, but to her credit, Exarchou never spells out those backgrounds; these performers show enough of the pain in their eyes and forced smiles. Neither does the filmmaker get literal about social critique; these are women who clearly don’t have many choices, but they’re also drawn to performing, to the sequins and spotlights, no matter how tawdry.
And that turns out to be the fascinating crux of this film that marks an exciting next-generation Greek talent. What keeps it all from being too bleak is the suggestion that even amid suffering, art and expression, plus a shit ton of silver face makeup, can provide escape and empowerment—albeit not necessarily “high art”, nor the kind that involves a hype man yelling at you to shake it harder. 
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