By Robert St. Martin
The Summer with Carmen (To kalokairi tis Karmen, Greece, 2023) is one of the year’s most charming and unforgettable comedies. Director Zacharias Mavroeidis and co-writer Fondas Chalatsis have put together a film that is offbeat and hilarious but with a style of storytelling that is driven by carnal passion and a desire to push boundaries. This highly entertaining film from Greece is no sobering fable about social realism. Rather we meet gay characters who are dealing with life’s more inconsequential events rather than wallowing in despair. After its premier at the Venice Film Festival in September 2023, The Summer with Carmen is truly a lively opening to this year’s Frameline 48 in San Francisco on Thursday, June 20, when it screens at the Roxie Theatre at 8:30 pm.
In his debut feature The Summer with Carmen, Zacharias Mavroeidis turns the gay romantic comedy on its head using the principals of metafictional filmmaking to guide the story. It seems like the writers set out to make a film that redefines the romantic comedy – rather than trying to steer away from the tropes and cliches, the film embraces them and reconfigures them into a gloriously upbeat story that focuses on two young men recalling a particular summer from their recent past. In deconstructing the genre in which it is crafted and the psychology of the characters, the story focuses on the process of coming to terms with one’s shortcomings.
The two central performances, with Yorgos Tsiantoulas and Andreas Labropoulos are impressive as two men who could not be more different – they are divided by age, profession, demeanor and desire. Demosthenes (played by the hunky hairy-chested Yorgos Tsiantoulas) is a former actor who is now working as a public servant after having left his lover two Panos two years before. Nikitas (Andreas Labropoulos), a close friend since this time in film school together with Demosthenes, is at the gay nude beach during Demostheses’ vacation time from his government job.
Nikitas grew up on the tiny remote Greek island of Kastellorizo, which is located only a mile off the Turkish coast near Kas and there struggled with his identify as a closet gay adolescent. Some years later, Nikitas attended film school in Athens and performed on stage as a gay character in a play entitled Sisters. Lately as an aspiring film director, he has received from an off-screen producer an offer to finance his first feature. But he is experiencing a bit of writer’s block. “Fun, sexy, Greek and low budget,” appear to be the only parameters which Nikitas has been given from an off-screen producer in underwriting his first feature.
While in film school, Demosthenes and Nikitas became fast friends, and Demosthenes uses their meeting to vocalize his desire to return to the realm of creativity as they languish on a nude gay beach near Athens one lazy day. He suggests Nikitas allow him to assist in writing his script, crafting it around a somewhat intense summer they shared two years prior, when Demosthenes was embroiled in a break-up with his boyfriend of four years, Panos (Nikolaos Mihas). We come to realize that their shared experience as insecure people trying to navigate life as openly queer men in contemporary Greece that draws them together.
Drawing a lot of inspiration from traditional Greek comedy structure, the film develops its characters as complex individuals with many existential questions, most of which go unanswered. Director Mavroeidis manages to find beauty in both the human body and the natural landscapes that we traverse throughout the film. The setting oscillates between gorgeous beaches littered with sunbaked nude bodies and quaint, gorgeously designed homes, both serving as the location of some of the most profound philosophical conversations. The blend of humor and pathos gives the film a distinct atmosphere, which the writers intentionally keep quite vague since this approach draws us into the eccentric world inhabited by these characters.
The opening scenes at the gay nudist beach of Limanakia near Athens with plenty of male frontal visibility may remind some viewers of Sebastian Silva’s recent Rotting in the Sun – a film that also delves into metatextuality regarding a filmmaker floundering for creative expression and trying to write. Like Silva, Mavroeidis finds inspiration in the cruisy queer energy of a nude beach, though here, the focus is more verbal than visual. Both films delve into the vacuous vortex casual sex can inspire when, subconsciously, someone might be yearning for something more meaningful or intimate. Nikitas ends up taking a backseat to the travails of Demosthenes, the object of affection for himself and various lovers. All we really learn about this burgeoning director is his aspiration for a career resembling Xavier Dolan (a poster of 2014’s Mommy looming in his bedroom).
After its initial set-up, we finally meet Carmen, the symbolic catalyst for Demosthenes’ emotions and the center of the imagined film that Nikitas is hoping to write and direct. The time spent with Carmen is both hilarious and profound. You must see the film to discover that dynamic. Music and arias from Bizet’s Carmen rift through parts of the film, as if to suggest a musical in the making. The play with typical gay cultural flashpoints with its reconfiguration of traditional romantic comedy through queer lens will leave you laughing. The Summer with Carmen shows us the difference between defining who or what we really want vs. what we’ve been taught to expect based on whatever labels are placed upon us.
This charming and unexpectedly sexy film on the opening night of Frameline 48 screens at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco on Thursday, June 20, at 8:30 PM. Tickets are mostly sold out but there is a rush line. The Summer with Carmen will be available online for viewing beginning June 24 through the Frameline Digital Screening Room. For more information, go to: https://www.frameline.org/films/frameline48/the-summer-with-carmen.
