XENIA Receives Positive Reviews at Cannes

Xenia" had many problems during production, most stemming from the shutdown of state TV (and main financier of his film) ERT, but the warm reception the film got in its premiere in the Cannes Film Festival, was the biggest compensation for its contributors.

The festival's official website calls Koutras the Greek Almodovar, a very flattering remark from a festival where the Spaniard is considered a totem. Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter wrote the first review of the film in its website, saying that in spite of the predictability of its story, the film has great chemistry and will certainly find an audience.

Here's part of the review:

After the death of their Albanian mother, two teenage brothers go in search of their Greek father in Xenia, the latest feature of brash-and-bold Hellenic director Panos Koutras ("The Attack of the Giant Mousaka", "A Woman’s Way").

With the younger of the two siblings a flamboyant 15-year-old gay boy; his broad-shouldered brother, three years his senior, a potential candidate for a Greek Idol-like singing contest and with more bunny-driven surrealism than Donnie Darko, there’s a decidedly campy side to the proceedings that Koutras effectively juxtaposes with the hard-edged realities of contemporary Greece, a beautiful but hostile nation wrecked by the ongoing economic crisis and a place in which xenophobia, racism and homophobia seem to fester freely.

Though the story’s finally too predictable and a little too thin to captivate for the film’s entire two-hours-plus running time, the characters, their chemistry and their plight are compelling, which should ensure a healthy festival life for this Un Certain Regard selection, as well as niche theatrical opportunities, especially for youth- and queer-oriented distributors.

The title is significant, as Xenia, which can be translated as “hospitality,” refers to both the ancient Greek custom that the current debate over immigrants in Greece (such as these half-Albanian kids) willfully ignores, as well as a hotel chain that’s gone bust and that provides the siblings with an abandoned, half-ruined building to sleep in on their no-budget journey to find their father -- a potent visual metaphor for the state of hospitality in a divided country in tatters.

Though very affable, Gelia can’t quite overcome the contradiction written into the DNA of Ody, who’s both a tough guy and improbably in love with the songs of a 1960s diva. As his kid brother, Nikouli, also a newcomer, is a revelation as Dany, a kid who’s a loveable, confused but well-meaning disaster area, and the couple’s colorful back-and-forths are one of the film’s chief pleasures.