Opa!

In trying to catch up with my movie schedule, the bane of my existence are "one-and-done" movies---that is, releases that play for only a single week. It's like trying to fight a huge fire and having put out small brush fires at the same time.

That being said, this annoyance was perhaps the only reason I was not looking forward to seeing Opa! on Thursday evening over at the Carmike 10, which I can see out my window as I type this. I'd seen a trailer for it, I think in Dodge City last month, and I wasn't even sure it was going to make it to Fort Collins. It's an independent movie that actually showed at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005, but only now is being released in theaters, for a very limited run without any marketing. I was glad when I saw it arrive nearly on my doorstep. Even so, I waited until Thursday evening, the last possible showing, to see it. Such is my laziness.

When I tried to buy a ticket to it, the college-aged guy with a beard in the glass booth told me, "That isn't showing anymore." I looked up at the marquee to double check. He corrected himself, saying he forget it was here, because I was the first person to buy a ticket for it all day long.

Needlessly to say, I was the only person in the auditorium. It turns out this was a good thing, because it was showing in the tiny corner auditiroium at the Carmike and they had forgotten to turn the heat on.

This gave me a chance to walk around, and eventually to...dance!

Yes, dance! Of course I danced to keep warm. Who wouldn't have? This is a movie about the Greek Isles, after all. But unlike the abysmal My Life in Ruins earlier this summer, this is a real movie about Greece.

Indeed it was very Greek. It was shot entirely in Greece, on the island of Patmos where it takes place, and in the first few minutes I felt like I was transported to the Aegean, not just in the stereotypical sense, but with all the little details familiar to anyone who has been there. I knew I was going to like this the minute I saw the tree trunks painted white beside the road, and the calf-length pants worn by the heroine's preteen daughter.

Moreover, the Greek characters actually speak Greek with each other when out of earshot of the English speakers. How nice! I love the Greek language, and the minute I started hearing it, I found myself stretching my mouth muscles to pronounce words and phrases I hadn't heard in a long time. And when they started dancing, well, I've already told you that the auditorium was cold.

The narrative is a love story between a geeky American archaeologist named Eric (Matthew Modine) and a local Greek woman named Katerina (played by Cypriot Agni Scott). Katerina is free-spirited and open, quite the opposite of Modine's archaeologist.

The story takes full advantage of this comparison in an early scene on the patio of the waterside taverna that Katerina owns and operates. Both characters in effect "dance" on the patio separately, then later together. Eric's "dance" takes the form of awkwardly guiding an electronic detection device (that looks like a giant suitcase) among the tables of the startled and suspicious patrons and staff. Later, Katerina moves over the same ground (literally) but in the form of traditional Greek dancing with the tables cleared away and music playing. She then drags Eric onto the floor. What a wonderful way to make the characters come together in parallel fashion, especially since the patio itself turns out to be the literal stage of the conflict that will arise between the two lovers.

The conflict is specifically that Eric is searching for a long-lost treasure (the cup of St. John the Divine, the author of the Book of Revelation, on Patmos). Eric's father was unable to find the cup, and thus we get a "redemption of the father" narrative tension.

What follows is a Local Hero type of conflict---will the taverna be destroyed in the name of unearthing the treasure that possibly lies beneath? Of course, this conflict will spoil the love story for a while, until the hero can patch it up by doing the right thing.

But as in any good narrative, the tension arises not so much from the fact that Eric wants (at first) to dig up the taverna patio, but rather that he conceals this from Katerina, allowing her to fall in love with him, all the while knowing what he is planning for her beloved taverna.

I liked how Eric is written and played not as a heartless scientist, but simply a little awkward, one step behind in the dance. He earnestly attempts to fix his mistakes as he discovers them without digging in his heels.

This being a comedy, the lovers will eventually get back together. I'm obviously not spoiling anything in that regard.

There were plenty of wonderful little touches in this movie that made it both coherent and fun. For example, a trio of black-clad older Greek women act like a chorus from a classical drama, commenting on the characters from time to time.

There's a wonderful scene between the two characters in a chapel inside a cave. Love stories typically use these kind of "encounters in a chapel" scenes to informally bind the characters in a de facto marriage. This "wedding" one was especially well done, especially photographically. There's also a good comparison between the sacred cup which the hero is looking for, and the informal use of shared drinking (of ouzo) between the characters which binds them together in social fashion--one of many little narrative touches that impressed me.

Another surprisingly nice part of the film was that it treated Christianity in a decent way. This was undoubtedly because it was Greek, not American. A Hollywood movie would never have had these kind of subtle touches that used the characters' Christian religious sensibilities in a way that didn't display it as dysfunctional.

This is a lightweight "chick" drama to be sure---nothing very deep, and with a story that's been told many times before. But I don't need original concept at every turn, just a good story.

Yet I couldn't help thinking that this movie just had utterly the wrong title. The word "Opa" is a Greek exclamation of happiness, one we hear the heroine yell several times. But Americans don't know this, and so it just looks like a goofy word. I think the movie would have done a bit better to have been named, for example, "Treasure of the Greek Isles," or something like that. It might have sold a few more tickets.

But then I might not have been alone in the Carmike. And then I wouldn't have been able to dance.