REVIEW: 'Apples' (2020, Christos Nikou)

Aris Servetalis in ‘Apples.’ / Photograph courtesy of Bartosz Swiniarsk Cinetic Media. Screened at the 2021 QCinema.

By Stephanie Mayo

Internationally acclaimed Greek film Apples is Christos Nikou’s directorial debut and Greece’s 2020 entry to the Academy Awards’ Best International Film category. It drew praises for its themes of loss and grief with touches of humor.

In Apples, the world is suffering from an amnesia pandemic. The bleak scenes are interrupted by sounds of ambulance sirens, picking up citizens who cannot remember their names and their past.

One night, a middle-aged man, Aris (Aris Servetalis), wakes up on a public bus, lost and confused. Unable to provide the bus driver his name and identification cards, he is brought to a hospital as an amnesia patient.

Aris soon joins a recovery program that helps unclaimed amnesia patients create new identities. To help him start anew, doctors provide Aris a series of tasks, a checklist of “life experiences” that must be documented by a Polaroid camera.

Nikou’s direction is stark and ruminative, providing the audience with enough interest in Aris’s perfunctory completion of his everyday tasks. However, without knowledge of his past, combined with his stoicism, it is hard to deeply empathize with Aris’ journey.

I have predicted the twist quite early into the film, so the revelation ends up anticlimactic. The filmmakers, though, drop sporadic clues, making the film a puzzle meant to be pieced together towards the films’ denouement.

Apples may leave you dry-eyed—and only mildly affected. But it is not without its merits. There is beauty in its restrained drama and deadpan humor, and it articulates some painful truths on the human condition.

3.5/5 stars
Original post