After Suntan, Argyris Papadimotropoulos returns to another Greek summer in the alleys of Kypseli, with his new film Monday. Chloe (Denise Gough) and Mickey (Sebastian Stan), two Americans living in Greece, will be pierced by the arrow of “unbalanced Cupid” Argyris (George Pyrpassopoulos) at a frantic party, just a few hours before Chloe returns to the USA.
She, a typical American freelancer lawyer / tourist. He, although American, is a Greek-style classic handsome dj of previous decades. The two of them, a seemingly unmatched couple who decided to live the madness in a three rooms appartment in Kypseli. Their relationship, if sex is very good or good and very much, in whatever order you prefer, we will find the rest at some point.
The film, divided into chapters, all but one of which are entitled Friday, tries every time to prepare the viewer for the harsh Monday that will dawn, but without it coming, except at the end. The “evolution” of the relationship between the two protagonists deepens in each chapter / Friday, getting closer and closer to the rupture each time. Will it happen? Emotions, experiences that each of them carries and external factors are inserted in the unraveling of each chapter / Friday, testing, in an escalating setting, the boundaries of the two protagonists.
This scene unfolds in a landscape that is quite familiar to the Athenians of the center, with the Kypselioti district swallowing the Americanness of the protagonists! The Athenian life of the film is not far from reality, but this does not mean that there is no evidence of exaggeration (Sex in the streets of the center and in the basements of Omonia is not one of these exaggerations. Athenians have written stories about lofts of Korai and bear the harsh accusation of “having sex on verandas”). The complete realistic approach of the Athenian landscape and Athenian life is also contributed by the complete absence of clichés such as riots and sirtaki, which are almost imposed, with fluctuating intensity in recent years, in corresponding productions, just because the film was shot in Greece *.
In the end, the scene succeeds and dominates the viewer’s interest, in combination with some appearances-surprises around the main cast **. The plot, although it develops with the above interesting pattern of repeated Fridays, somewhere fails to convince us or, from another point of view, manages to disappoint us in terms of the result, in the sense that it does not offer us what we would really like to see happen as a normal development. Perhaps it is to blame for the fact that in view of the coming and every coming Friday, the experiences and feelings of the protagonists are easily overcome, almost in a hurry, without having the appropriate background of the characters, which would justify their attitude (for the first case). Maybe, again, the crude admission (???) is to blame that such an intense relationship that we are watching is nothing more than a coincidence of the needs of the two protagonists, a contract (for the second case).
* The reflection is posed through the film itself in a scene in which Mickey (Sebastian Stan) and Argyris (George Pyrpassopoulos) are looking for the music investment of an advertising spot something that is Greece, without reminding, however, Greece. *1
*1 Note to note: If instead of Friday, the chapters were titled Saturday, they could not escape the soundtrack of the film to be Kazantzidis’s “Saturday Night” and the bouzouki to dominate once again in a film shot in Greece: ” from Monday again, bitterness and darkness “.
**And where you say that it is not possible for Vaggelis Mourikis to be absent from such a production, he already appears in the first ten minutes of the film impersonating the owner of a bar on a Greek island. And, of course, Paola Revenioti in the security custody.
