It just boils down too 'Well people are kind of shitty, what can you do?' What little story is there, and I'll get to that in a bit, is completely overshadowed by eighty percent of the anime is one of the characters droning on and on about human nature while not having anything to say on the topic. It didn't even have the decency to be comically edgy about it. Because if that isn't what just happened, what did just happen is I watched the most infuriatingly pretentious anime I have ever seen in my life. A Ted Talk where the speaker is telling you that people are shit for an hour and eighteen minutes, and then has sex with a human woman that he is trying to convince everyone is an alien. What clearly happened here is I went in to watch an older anime film and clicked so bad I found a rejected Ted Talk on YouTube somewhere. You wonder if he needed this socialization therapy - sexist and self-serving as it can be - with or without the disease.Īnd you know who hasn’t been isolated, changed for the worse and made lonelier by modern life? Let’s just say that sometimes he’s on his leash, and sometimes he isn’t and leave it at that.I am not here today reviewing an anime movie, that is working under the assumption what I watched was a movie. That could be a comment on the basic courtesies and empathy of life that our logged-on but checked-out era is missing, although we never see or hear a cell phone.Īris wasn’t in the best place before his amnesia. The tapes instruct recipients to visit dying people in the hospital, befriend their families and even attend their funerals. The puzzle at its center is funny and intriguing, and hardly enough to drive the narrative. ![]() The picture’s a bit dry and too quiet for my taste. But there’s a wink in here somewhere as “Apples” - which takes its name from a purchase Aris makes and the shopkeeper’s question, “Have you ever had tastier apples?” - is making a commentary on how disconnected modern life is. Nikou, credited as co-writer as well as director, keeps the mood quiet, sad and almost somber. Maybe this “new life” isn’t all that? What’s going on? Let’s just say the dog knows. He’s hearing “use her” instructions on his tape. ![]() But with the radio on, he can sing along with “Sealed with a Kiss,” in English.Īnd we sense reluctance to get any more deeply involved with her on his part. Does she remember how to drive? “I think so,” and they’re off. Thus they meet and meet up, and she drags him along to assorted fresh assignments. It’s not until they’re outside the theater and he sees her taking a Polaroid selfie next to the movie poster, just as he’s done, that he recognizes that she’s in the same program as her. Whatever “Aris” is experiencing, “Anna” has it bad. It’s like she’s never been to a movie before. But he’s distracted by the striking stranger ( Sofia Georgovassili) who shrieks and cowers behind the seats as if she can’t separate reality from the horrors seen on the screen. As a revival of a certain “Chainsaw Massacre” picture is playing, that’s his choice. The program entails taking instructions from the cassette - going out in public, go places where you can meet people, take pictures of what you do and make a photo album.įind a bike, “try doing a wheelie. He’s assigned an apartment, given a Polaroid camera and a cassette player. He flunks even the most basic short term memory tests.īut the therapy program directors ( Argyris Bakirtzis and Anna Kalaitzidou) decide he’s a candidate for their little “start your life over” project. That’s where we see just how little he can retain. ![]() The “system” is still functioning, and he’s taken to a hospital. One day, he doses off on the bus, and when the driver awakens him, he can’t answer the basics - “What’s your name? (in Greek, with English subtitles) Where do you live?” ![]() A neighbor’s dog seems to be the only living thing delighted to see him. There’s an amnesia pandemic going on all around him, but even without it, we can see just how limited his life is. There’s a hint of both in this contemplative, obscure and somewhat droll trip into identity and the screwy ways “science” tries to reestablish it, or reinvent it, in this Greek comedy.Īris Servetalis is our hero. “Apples” is the debut feature of filmmaker Christos Nikou, who picked up experience as a second unit director for Yorgos Lanthimos (“Dogtooth”) but also Richard Linklaker (“Before Midnight”). Give up on trying to recover old memories, With clinical help, just start over, make new memories, “manage a new life.” Our protagonist is slowly, rhythmically beating his head against a load-bearing pillar.Ī radio suggests a new therapy for the viral, planet-wide outbreak of amnesia. It opens with the sounds of thumping and a camera tracking through a gloomy, cluttered apartment.
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