Chevalier
Bert Rebhandl selects three of the best new film releases: part 1, a Greek maritime comedy
Bert Rebhandl selects three of the best new film releases: part 1, a Greek maritime comedy
Chevalier
Directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari
In UK cinemas 22 July
Athina Rachel Tsangari looks at men as if they are creatures from one of the wildlife documentaries she referred to in her poignant debut Attenberg (2010). She is part of a undeclared new school of cinema, which might be called ‘The Behaviouralists’. So far there is only one other member of this school, Yorgos Lanthimos, whom she has previously collaborated with. He recently made The Lobster (2015) which sees Colin Farrell play a man who chooses a lobster as the animal he must turn into if he loses a bizarre relationship game in a hotel-cum-sanitorium. Games, systems and rules are essential for the Behaviouralists yet always in flux.
This is what Tsangari’s wryly funny newly-released movie Chevalier is basically about: Six men are on vacation on a yacht and have time to kill. They play a game to find out who among them is the best ‘at everything’. Everything means literally anything: who has the biggest penis, the most reliable erection (to name two key obsessions that determine bestness among men), but also who can do the best version of a schmaltzy song, who’s the best at housekeeping or who’s the best actor when on the phone to the wife at home. Being slightly better off than average, the men represent a certain strata of Greek society. But there are losers among them as well as designated leaders which becomes prime fodder for role reversal in the champion of everything game.
Tsangari, a Greek filmmaker who has lived in the US for a long time (a small credit in Richard Linklater’s 1991 film Slacker testifies to her initiation into indie cinema at a crucial moment), uses the reduced setting of Chevalier to good effect: the men are prisoners to their pleasure, they can jet-ski away into the horizon, but only as long as they can still see the boat (or the barren hills of the unpopulated coastlines they have anchored in front of). The days’ main events are mealtimes, announced by loudspeaker. There’s no formal resolution to this autopoietic comedy of competitiveness over collaboration. Instead the take home is a strong and convincing feminist tip: the very problem men have always deemed themselves the solution for may well be maleness itself.
