Suntan

Whatever director Argyris Papadimitropoulos and his co-writer, Syllas Tzoumerkas, had in mind, a full rethink was in order.

While Suntan is more than just a tale about an older man becoming involved with a younger woman, it's unfortunately not as profound when it later claims to be a statement on the movie you think you're watching.

Suntan pulls you into this strange man's world before slyly and slowly turning the tables. You won't like the darkness you find there.

"Suntan" captures a set of very specific feelings: the exhilaration and embarrassment of falling, followed by the desperate denial that one has landed in a very bad place.

As Kostis' neurosis shades into psychosis, the limitations of Papadimitropoulos and Tzoumerkas' increasingly blunt, tonally wayward and two-dimensional screenplay become apparent.

It's an unflinching depiction of one man's descent into an embarrassing vortex of desire, paired with a spectacular lack of self-awareness. Helmer Argyris Papadimitropoulos scores a bull's-eye, in all senses.

Suffused with shades of gold and jade, Argyris Papadimitropoulos's Suntan looks like a sunny Eric Rohmer film, but plays more like a gloomy Claude Chabrol.

The film's final scene will haunt you for some time.

See it, from between your fingers. But only if you're not in the throes of a midlife crisis.

The solace that we can all take from Suntan, however, is that this is an extraordinary, exuberant, and inventive piece of cinema, and a finely crafted character sketch and essay in dark moral comedy.

Suntan is further proof that people should sit-up and take notice of the Greek "weird-wave", a movement brimming with fresh ideas, tackling dark, social issues.

Bar basic human standards, it is hard to feel for anyone involved.