Recensione: Hunt – Cineuropa #finsubito prestito immediato

After the fiction feature Bliss (2016) and the documentary Sopi – A Day (2017), Greek director Christos Pitharas comes bearing a simple yet loaded new feature whose title, Hunt, betrays the stifled emotions of his late middle-aged protagonist – which are merely waiting to spring forth. Hunt is one of the Greek offerings enjoying its world premiere in the Thessaloniki International Film Festival’s Meet the Neighbours+ International Competition. Distinct in its intentionally grainy character, Pitharas’s movie could be described as a profoundly relatable character study of a man who’s witnessed plenty of nonsense in his life, whereas his simple joys can’t quell the emotion that lies beneath.

Yannis (Yannis Belis) just wants some peace and quiet. An avid hunter and craftsman by trade, he can’t stand the whines coming from the dog of his younger neighbour, Elias (Vasilis Anastasiou). Elias, who viciously manhandles his dog and leaves him locked out overnight on the adjoining balcony, openly cares little about either Yannis’s complaints or the well-being of the dog. Through the dismissal from his disdainful neighbour, deep-rooted cracks of empathy and emotion in Yannis’s outer shell slowly begin to reveal themselves.

Hunt’s opening scenes are shot in shaky handheld with filmically grainy lensing by Thanos Liberopoulos, also immediately alerting us to its confining 4:3 aspect ratio. We first observe Yannis from afar during his bird hunt, almost voyeuristically – amidst rapid cuts (with active editing by Panos Voutsaras), our protagonist is seemingly elusive, in his own space and time as he partakes in what he loves the most. Throughout the rest of the film, Yannis drifts deliberately in and out of focus (Pitharas uses depth of field and rack focusing to great effect to disorientate and then reorientate the viewer), but in careful close-up or medium close-up: we’re always watching, except this time, we can’t look away.

After the death of his mother, Marika, Yannis has no choice but to try to get her affairs in order, even if it disrupts his routine of buying a loaf of rustic bread from the local store for €3.20. Liberopoulos’s cinematography of a muted colour palette remains vaguely mystical throughout, as if we can’t quite pierce the inner state of Yannis. After we watch him carefully make jewellery, he returns home to empathise with Elias’s dog caged up outside, pawing at the barrier between the balconies. Although Yannis’s stoic features reveal little, his care for the unnamed dog gives us all we need to know to understand him.

The music by Dinos Tselis and Anna Komianou oscillates between three primary styles: melancholic classical guitar as Yannis expresses his soft side with the dog, frantic strings transmitting Yannis’s inner rage and pulsating experimental drumbeats that mediate between the two states. Something bubbles deep beneath the surface: even if we can’t read it from his face, his lip-smacking and meal-chewing tell us more than we can glean from his few words. To add to the film’s lightly cryptic nature, its linear scenes are interspersed with bright, oneiric and oversaturated beach shots: a hazy figure walks slowly towards the camera, bit by bit, until we later learn of its identity. Although his sketch-like composition of Yannis fits the film’s 73-minute running time, Pitharas could still offer a bit more by way of character portraiture and development: the film’s climax comes and goes in the blink of an eye, and then we’re left to settle with the pieces.

Maybe there’s an innate irony to Yannis’s love of bird hunting and his empathy for the canine, but he also reveals a distinction between hunting for sport and hunting as a tool. Pitharas’s universe may even be the opposite of a dog-eat-dog world, but when it comes to living one’s life, it’d do one good to abide by the least objectionable moral standards.

Hunt is a Greek production by Pitharas’s Art Renegade, co-produced by the Greek Film Centre, ERT SA and RentPhotoVideo. Its world sales are up for grabs.