THREAD (2016 - Greek)

Studio:       TBD
Director:    Alexander Voulgaris
Writer:       Alexander Voulgaris
Producer:  Eleni Bertes
Stars:     Sofia Kokkali

Review Score:

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Summary:

In a dystopian setting, a political revolutionary gives birth to a boy who may be the key to saving Greece from an oppressive regime.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Athens 1972 – Before the 1,000th Night – Niki, a key figure in the resistance group “Faces,” which works to overthrow the dictatorship of the “Visionaries,” gives birth to a boy she names Lefteris behind a movie theater screen.

Niki agrees to an interview with French media. The camera crew turns out to be Visionaries in disguise, who take Niki prisoner. Niki is tortured with a small spiked bat nicknamed “The Indian” and is also raped by a doctor.

While Niki is in captivity, the Trusted One, another revolutionary, puts Lefteris into hiding. Niki finds out that her son’s First Word was “cyclamen.”

1975 – A Faces plan codenamed “Thread” restores democracy to Greece. Niki returns to mothering Lefteris, although she is also coaxed into becoming a reluctant political candidate.

The Commander, who is Faces’ leader, reveals to Niki that the Trusted One was the person who gave her up to the Visionaries in exchange for amnesty. Niki reflects back on how the Trusted One was actually Lefteris’ father. The Commander suggests revealing Lefteris’ parentage to journalists now that the Trusted One is dead, but Niki adamantly refuses.

Niki celebrates Lefteris’ birthday with him at the beach. Niki is suddenly shot in her stomach by an unseen sniper. Niki immediately flees in her car, but realizes she left Lefteris behind. Unable to get help from Faces, Niki phones her mother Evi to go back for the boy.

Athens 1995 – Now 23 years old, Lefteris lives inside “The Mirror,” a large reflective wall separating Athens from the world, which was built following a civil war with Faces. Lefteris regularly performs oral sex on a mute roller girl in order to receive coded numbers and a map from between her legs, which he needs to destroy the Mirror.

Lefteris infiltrates the home belonging to the Mayor of Athens. The mayor performs a painful sex act on Lefteris. Afterward, Lefteris finds a coded key hidden inside a dead fish in the Mayor’s refrigerator.

Lefteris returns to the roller girl and fingers her. He also intentionally cuts out his tongue so that his mind will be his only voice. Using the codes he has obtained, Lefteris breaks into the Mirror and activates its self-destruct system. Lefteris then removes his face and eats an umbilical cord connected to another face.

The mute roller girl tells Lefteris that her own tongue was cut out so that her First Word would not be heard. The roller girl tells Lefteris that she wants to bear his child so that she can Sacrifice herself for Lefteris’ son.

After an ethereal conversation with his disembodied mother’s voice, Lefteris uses a knife to cut himself as well as a symbolic thread wrapped around his arm. The Mirror’s self-destruct countdown finally reaches zero.

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Review:

If you’re curious about “Thread,” and came here looking for a better sense of understanding what the movie is about, you’d best continue your search elsewhere.  If you’ve already seen “Thread,” and found this review hoping someone might help make sense of the movie, this isn’t going to be to your benefit either.  However, if you’re simply interested in a binary indication regarding whether or not the film is intriguing at all, that I can easily answer with a definitive “no.”

When sketch comedy shows do parodies of pretentious foreign language films bloated by arty symbolism, they resemble “Thread” to a T.  Alexander Voulgaris, directing under the cloying nickname “The Boy,” presents a political allegory against a slight sci-fi setting where a resistance fighter births a boy who proves crucial in battling back against the regime.  Outside of that incredibly loose concept constituting a “plot,” “Thread” offers only a miasmic mishmash of aimless ambiguity.

Playing the woman, Niki, as well as her child Lefteris once he grows into adulthood, Sofia Kokkali is the sole actor whose face appears onscreen.  If not partially disguised by glasses or a mask, everyone else is only a torso, legs, set of hands, or disembodied voice interacting with Niki/Lefteris.

Should you want metaphorical meaning out of such senseless scenery as feet walking across broken watermelons in slow motion, you’re going to have to divine it yourself, and chances are you’ll be wrong.  Voulgaris wrote the majority of the movie after it was already shot.  Since no mouths but Niki and Lefteris’ are seen onscreen, dialogue was dubbed during editing, essentially making up “Thread” as it went along without any real roadmap to follow.

After the movie’s L.A. Film Festival premiere, the programmer responsible for selecting “Thread” exalted it as “a powerful film,” perhaps without knowing it never had a planned purpose.  In the Q&A, the programmer went on to ask the director about “Thread” as alternate history.  Voulgaris deflected, saying he is interested in the genre, but didn’t conceive his film to fit within that category.  The programmer next asked about the extent to which “Thread” paralleled a subconscious narrative concerning the director’s personal family.  Voulgaris demurred again with an equivalent of “not really.”  Citing the lead performance, question three posited that the director has an attraction to strong women.  Voulgaris grimaced slightly through his teeth in consideration and then said, “I don’t know.”

In other words, everything the programmer supposedly saw in the film didn’t actually exist.  An audience member had his interpretation similarly shut down when he cited the stylistic influence of Luis Bunuel’s “Un Chien Andalou.”  Voulgaris’ reply?  “Not so much.”  If a viewer has to fight this hard to find a movie’s context, and still doesn’t, maybe it simply isn’t there.

During the screening, the margin of my notebook became a column for tabulating the walkouts I witnessed.  When that number hit double digits, I regretfully realized I was committed to staying behind when I wanted nothing more than to join the exodus.  Someone had to document the disaster as a warning to others.

Two people took the exit aisle after a particularly bizarre monologue where Niki asks if someone wants to see outer space between her legs, then begs aloud for Yuri Gagarin to finger f*ck her.  However, no one left during a rape scene, which one might think would be the most objectionable content.  With a majority leaving at innocuous moments instead, the sense was that indifference proved a greater motivator for disinterest than disgust.

Someone bought a bill of goods when s/he mistook “Thread” for thought-provoking cinema.  Washing obtuse imagery in colorful giallo lighting doesn’t elevate abstract dialogue to have intelligent intentions.  Nor does it inject artistry into confounding cuts of a woman drawing on her nipples in lipstick, performing oral sex so that coded numbers will telepathically transfer, or symbolically speaking into a microphone made out of a previous torture tool.

“Thread” has nothing for me.  Unless you consider a man cutting out his tongue so that his mind can be his only voice to be a daringly deep concept, the movie may not have anything for you to mull over either.

Review Score:  25

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