Alexandros Avranas (director)
plays2place (studio)
18 (certificate)
99 (length)
20 June 2014 (released)
16 June 2014
Miss Violence opens with a seemingly normal birthday party for eleven year old Angeliki. As her family prepare food and dance around their muted apartment in Athens, Angeliki walks slowly towards the balcony and calmly jumps to her death. What follows is an extremely dark study of a family in turmoil, struggling to make sense of Angeliki's apparent suicide. Her grandfather, played with methodical menace by Themis Panou, maintains it was an accident and tries to convince his family and their very few acquaintances of this but the viewer knows the truth. Not the whole truth however, as this critically acclaimed Greek drama carries with it more dark secrets which slowly unfold to reveal an unbearably miserable and upsetting finale.
The family unit is already an odd one with Eleni living with her parents who help look after her four children, down to three since the accident. The father of these children is nowhere to be seen and it is alluded to that he left them but it is not clear if this man was father to all her children or whether they each had different father. This is a source of shame for the family which is clear to see when social services visit the flat to investigate whether they are coping with the loss of Angeliki. What follows is a slow and arduous uncovering of shady family secrets, strained marriages and teenage rebellion.
Director Alexandros Avranas deliberately uses voyeuristic shots and faded colours to bring the family's distressing existence to the screen and by the end of of the film the silence in the screening room was deafening. Any more explanation of the storyline would ruin the dramatic impact of the film but it is fair to say that it is a difficult watch. Behind the normality of a regular family hide horrific things which question the nature of paternal dominance and the ultimate fear of shame. The acting is superb with Eleni Roussinou's excellent portrayal of the children's mother simmering with both hysterical madness and desperate placation under the surface. The cinematography is very evocative too with the viewer vividly experiencing the claustrophobia of the apartment in every painstaking shot.
This is not a weirdly surreal Greek drama in the vein of Dogtooth but shares some of its intrigue while going off on shocking and blunt tangents. There are some complaints but to explain these would be to undermine the explosive plot except to say that if you are looking for catharsis none is forthcoming. There are also some gripes about certain unclear aspects of the characters and the frank nature of some scenes but this could be put down to cultural differences being lost in translation.
This is an important film and must be seen but there is an argument as to whether the blurring of lines between recent real life events and fictional films is helpful in the long run. If you fancy a fun night at the flicks this is not the film for you but if perhaps you require a sobering movie that lingers on hidden sin then this thought provoking and powerful drama certainly asks enough questions about society, no matter how unpalatable they may be.