With a title like “Fatal,” it’s no surprise that Greece’s nomination is headed to the International Oscars category. The third adaptation of Alexandros Papadiamantis’s acclaimed novel follows the slow psychological collapse of an elderly midwife as she struggles with the deteriorating patriarchal society she helps. Although director Eva Nathena and screenwriter Katrina Bai attempt to trace their heroine’s state of mind, they often get lost in a muddled approach to blending cold reality with frenetic flashbacks and fantasy.
Characterized by an endemic sense of isolation, “The Killer” begins with a group of nameless girls dancing in a circle, singing a song that wishes there were only boys in their midst. After a quote from the Greek poet Odysseus of Elytes about the inevitability of the past reasserting itself in the present, Hadoula (Caryophilia Karapeti) is presented as she often appears in the film: walking briskly through the rocky terrain to help a woman in labor. birth. To the dismay of the entire room, the baby is a girl, the latest in a continuing series of female births on the Aegean island of Skiathos.
Although Murderess is set sometime in the early 1900s, its look and the sensibilities of the characters seem to belong to a much earlier period. Boys, who are almost entirely unseen throughout the film, are valued to a greater extent than they would be by normal society, and the women routinely try the herbs and other treatments described by Hudula to ensure that they give birth to a boy. None of these efforts seem to get anywhere, and the requisite pause in suspense and subsequent depressive or angry reaction inform much of the character dynamics at play here.
For her part, Hadoula has three daughters and two sons. The latter moved away from the village and did not appear, while the first stayed and helped their mother, and the eldest was a spinster in the literal sense of the word. In addition to her tiring routine of delivering disappointment, Hadula also has to face her own problems in the form of a vision of her dead mother (Maria Protobaba).
Initially appearing as a silent observer, piercing her gaze as she delivers the bad news to the patient, her mother soon becomes a frequent presence. The ill-fated grandfather appears in the present as an ironic reminder of Hadola’s inability to improve the lot of her fellow village women and in flashbacks, as young Hadola (Giorgiana Dallara) is ruthlessly trained to follow in her mother’s footsteps and take charge. The role of the city midwife. These threads gradually grow in intensity until their intensity reaches a breaking point, and a series of increasingly implausible events ensue.
Given the straightforward title, it might be easy to guess where Hudola’s ideas would eventually go, but this progress is undermined by the programmatic nature of Nathina’s approach. There are many moments where you get lost in a dream or memory before suddenly waking up, often clearly delineating the film’s boundaries ostensibly around its main character’s delusions. The society around her is generally reduced to obvious types—an abusive husband, a blind priest, a drunken brother-in-law—and this in turn simplifies the turmoil that Hudoula faces.
“Assassin” makes good use of two key assets. The first is Karabeti, who ably carries the burden of portraying her character’s physical and mental transformation. Already thin but still strong at first, her committed portrayal prompts some of the strangest fluctuations between self-doubt and exuberance. The other is Skiathos itself, with its layered stone villages built along a ridge extending into the mist, adding an automatic sense of mystery that greatly helps maintain the film’s mood.
While “Fatal” is an intentionally isolated film, the parallels with other societies in other times are immediately apparent long before its end. After the final images, a Chiron reference appears, explaining the significance of a particular plot point and linking it to an ongoing historical crisis. The sudden shift in scale feels clumsy at best, especially when the set of circumstances just seen in the film are presented in such broad and extreme terms. Although Murderess is not without its eye-catching moments, the inflexibility of its approach proves to be a fatal flaw.