HARD GOODBYES: MY FATHER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2004 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Penny Panayotopoulou's HARD GOODBYES: MY FATHER (DISKOLI APOCHERETISMI: O BABAS MOU) is an incredibly sad story about a father who feels that he is failing his family for not providing adequately for their financial needs.
As the movie opens, 10-year-old Elias (Yorgos Karayannis) asks his older brother Aris (Hristos Bouyotas) when their father's business will pick up so that they can have separate rooms. Aris, of course, has no idea when his father's fortunes will change. The father (Stelios Mainas) is the odd man out in the household. His older son is openly hostile to him, and his wife (Ioanna Tsirigouli) is distant and angry. The paternal grandmother, who thankfully doesn't live with them, is a mean-spirited fomenter of family troubles. Only the clingy and loyal Elias provides the father any solace. Elias and his dad love nothing better than playing together and shaving together, even if Elias doesn't have a single strand of facial hair.
When the parents argue, as they frequently do, Elias runs to the bathroom to cover his ears and to count out loud in order to take his mind off of the squabbling. Another thing he loves to count are the small presents -- neatly wrapped bars of chocolate -- that his father has given him over the years. He never opens these golden treasures. Instead, he enjoys counting all twenty of them, which he keeps locked in his treasure box.
The father, an unsuccessful small appliance salesman to Greek villages, loads up his car -- which he refers to proudly as his store -- with merchandise and heads out on the road again in hopes of making some money. But, before he departs, he leaves a note for Elias, promising to return before the moon landing. (Like VALENTÍN, another recent father-son drama, HARD GOODBYES: MY FATHER is set in 1969, just before man's first landing on the lunar surface.) His father dies on the job, which Elias refuses to accept. The rest of the tragic story concerns the difficulty every member of the family has in dealing with their loss. In the film's most touching moment, the wife lays out her husband's best clothes onto their bed. Lying on top of his suit, she wraps it around her in order to derive some fleeting comfort and memory of his presence.
"I can live without anything, anything," Elias, in voice-over, says to his dead father, "because I keep it all there in my mind." The memories of his beloved father are his indelible treasures.
When the movie ended, I confess I was ready to bolt. This is definitely a good movie, but one that can be unbearably and painfully sad, especially for fathers.
HARD GOODBYES: MY FATHER runs 1:53. The film is in Greek with English subtitles. It is not rated but would be PG-13 for brief sex and nudity and would be acceptable for kids around 12 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, May 7, 2004. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the Camera Cinemas.
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