Sweet Country (1987)

User Rating:

5.3/10   

Director:

Mihalis Kakogiannis

Writers:

Mihalis Kakogiannis (writer)
Caroline Richards (novel)

Genre:

Drama | History

Tagline:

The best of us fight not because we hate...but because we love.

Plot:

Anna and Ben are settled in rural Chile in the early 1970's. They are very isolated and their only real friends are two Chilean sisters...

Plot Keywords:

Military | Chile | Santiago | Coup | Augusto Pinochet

Cast

Jane Alexander	...	Anna
John Cullum	...	Ben
Carole Laure	...	Eva
Franco Nero	...	Paul
Joanna Pettet	...	Monica
Randy Quaid	...	Juan
Irene Papas	...	Mrs. Araya
Jean-Pierre Aumont	...	Mr. Araya
Pierre Vaneck	...	Father Venegas
Katia Dandoulaki	...	Sister Mathilde
Ann Coleman	...	Dorothy
Giannis Voglis	...	Max
Betty Valassi	...	Sara
Dimitris Poulikakos	...	Torturer
Saun Ellis	...	Evelyn

Also Known As:

Glykeia patrida (Greece)

Runtime:

UK:143 min | USA:150 min | USA:120 min (video release)

Country:

Greece | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:16 | UK:18 | USA:R | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Greece

Company:

Greek Film Center

Trivia:

In order to achieve the feeling of horror in a scene where a gathering of female prisoners are harassed and psychologically tortured in the nude, director Michael Cacoyannis decided to appeal for volunteers rather than professional actors, asking both his associates and friends. Michael Cacoyannis interviewed women of different nationalities for casting the people in the scene, of English, French, American as well as Greek descent. Most of these women had never even seen a film camera, let alone undressed before one. Money was never an incentive for the women. Cacoyannis has said, "I explained that their inexperience in acting was an advantage. That their lack of artifice, the spirituality of their spontaneous reactions, would transcend physical realism, the way certain paintings can." At first, he was not too successful in the "recruiting" of these volunteers, but soon found the women he needed. One woman was a well-known author, another a journalist, three were college professors, others university students, secretaries or just housewives. The shooting of this sequence was completed in five very stressful hours, and the reactions were neither planned nor rehearsed. At the end of the shooting day, their eyes still full of tears, some of them expressed their gratitude for what called "a unique experience".

Quotes:

Anna: All you ever gave me was a tepid lemonade!

Movie Connections:

References Attilas '74 (1975)

Soundtrack:

Dulce Patria

Would have been okay if...

Randy Quaid, as has been noted elsewhere, had not been cast as a Chilean military man. What the other reviewer didn't mention was that Quaid's acting coach must have been the Frito Bandito. His accent is right out of Central Casting, Latino Division. His whole performance took away any credibility this film might have had up to that point. In a film this serious, the last thing one expects is a character whose accent is so off-the-wall as to throw the whole film off track. From the time he first appears and starts talking, they could have changed the name of the film to "National Lampoon's Political Assassination Movie." Sometimes it really does take just one apple to spoil the whole bunch.