In some ways a subversively subtle entry into contemporary gay cinema, this male-centric road movie is some ways your typical opposites attract tale featuring two clashing psychological types—an antisocial introvert, former Greek diving champ Victor (Vasilis Magouliotis)—reluctantly pairing off with antisocial extrovert Matthias, a German snowboard instructor who is twentysomething and single like Victor, heading from Bari to Bavaria. We learn that Victor lives with his grandmother, who has just died; and with a stormy existential crisis quickly overtaking him, he decides to ditch his mind-numbing factory job, take the fast ferry from Greece to Italy and then head out in his battered Audi toward Bavaria to try and reconnect with his estranged mother.
Along the way, he meets the persistently nosy and overcurious Matthias, whose annoying persistence in trying to strike up a relationship with the standoffish Greek leads to Victor finally relenting and offering to give Matthias a lift into Germany. The unlikely pair butt heads at every turn, as the obnoxious Matthias pesters Victor about everything from their chosen route to Germany to what meal to order at roadside restaurants, all in an obvious attempt to get the melancholic, tightly wound Victor to open up to him. (Matthias also turns out to be a petty thief, a revelation that serves as an additional bone of contention between the two.) But in the end, Matthias’s genial needling and amiable coercion begin to all-too-predictable effects on Victor, whose attraction to the provocative German is more or less that of a moth to a flame.
The treacly Europop soundtrack tends to give the film more of a twee feel than it probably warrants, but the Man with the Answers has some clever tart humor mixed in with the more obvious sentimental “two ships passing in the night” cliches that tend to get the upper hand. Director Stelios Kammitsis develops his characters in an extremely cautious, deliberate fashion; everything is played close to the vest throughout much of the film. But, slowly but surely, the layers gradually peel off of Victor and Matthias, both literally and figuratively. Recommended for LGBTQ film collections in public libraries.
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