✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Greece, Poland · 2018
1h 37m
Director Babis Makridis
Starring Giannis Drakopoulos, Evi Saoulidou, Nota Tserniafski, Makis Papadimitriou
Genre Drama
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
When his wife re-emerges from a long-lasting coma, a middle-aged lawyer concocts increasingly elaborate ways to try to regain what he misses most: the pity of others. As time goes on, his addiction to pity becomes so great that it takes him to the brink of it all.
The film has an identity problem. It’s uncertain what it wants to be. This is too damn bad because its first mode, a parody of male self-obsession, is perfectly satisfying; the comedy makes us shift in our seats, but the shifting is pleasurable, complemented by well-timed gags and a mesmerizingly selfish performance from its leading man, Yannis Drakopoulos.
If Pity doesn’t quite have the shock of the new on its side, then, its sharpest passages nonetheless exert the bracing, mouth-shuddering tang of neat ouzo: You know how it’s going to taste, but it leaves you wincing anyway.
Miraculously, Makridis doesn’t undercut the seriousness of Giannis’ plight with humor. The laughs derive naturally from Drakopoulos’ pitch-black performance.
The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden
Through its droll combo of stillness and churning dysfunction, perfectly embodied by Drakopoulos, Pity deconstructs the artifice of feeling and, most wickedly, movie sentimentality.
Screen International by Wendy Ide
Pity, which Makridis co-wrote with Yorgos Lanthimos’ regular collaborator Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, The Lobster), strikes a tonal balance between ruthless and wry, which positions it comfortably alongside the best of Greece’s current new wave.
A man, thoroughly dissatisfied with his life, finds new meaning when he forms a fight club with soap salesman Tyler Durden.
A place for dreams. A place for heartbreak. A place to pick up the pieces.
Three siblings separated in childhood plot their vengeance in a cutthroat city rife with power, deceit, and fortune.
Their idea of foreplay was murder
When his wayward younger sister moves into his apartment stirring memories of their shared painful past, Brandon's insular life spirals out of control.
After being coerced into working for a crime boss, a young getaway driver finds himself taking part in a heist doomed to fail.
The greatest story Hitchcock ever told
A children’s puppeteer is forced to confront his wicked stepfather and the secrets that have tortured him his entire life.
A failed stand-up comedian is driven insane, turning to a life of crime in chaos in Gotham City.
A young girl is transported back to the Swinging Sixties in her dreams where she discovers a dark secret
An unexpected encounter gives a haunted young woman the chance to get revenge…
A team of journalists must make the treacherous journey to Washington, D.C., before rebel groups attack the White House.