Attenberg

Please note the film does not have English subtitles and only partially English dialogue!

I recommend that you stop reading now. Attenberg is at its best when you don’t know too much about it beforehand. You’re likely going to continue reading anyway, so I will tell you something.

The Greek Weird Wave has become familiar, especially thanks to Yorgos Lanthimos, but another key figure of the movement is Athina Rachel Tsangari. Attenberg is a charmingly strange and vulnerable coming-of-age story about the 23-year-old Marina who cares for her terminally ill father in an unassuming small town. The sexually inexperienced Marina gets sex advice from her friend, Bella. When Bella teaches her friend how to French-kiss, Marina compares her tongue to a snail in her mind. Aside from the practical training, Bella compares penises cryptically, and says how seeing genitals while dreaming is a bad omen. Marina’s interest towards sex sparks when an engineer, who is left anonymous, arrives in the small town. (It must be mentioned that the engineer is played by a certain someone named Yorgos.)

Marina’s first steps into the world of sex, and her father’s impending death, tie together in the film to form an emotional, odd and wistful whole. As Marina begins to examine her identity, her father’s selfhood slips from time into eternity.

Deadpan yet still celebratory of physical expression, Attenberg is an unusual portrayal of sexuality and sorrow, and its quiet atmosphere stays lingering in the body – even if you know something about it beforehand.

Eelia Leikas (translated by Tara Tuchyner)

The free screening is presented together with European Parliament. The film is subtitled in Finnish and Swedish.