By Werner Busch. Young Andrew drives to the barracks with his girl-friend Dimitra, the draft notice is pinned to the car's dashboard. Dimitra is crying, hysterical in mourning. In the middle of the night they stop in front of a derelict house and Andrew tells her the story of Ioli: a girl that found her true love in just this derelict house. It's a story that will seal the fate of Andrew and Dimitra, as the past permeates the present, but the future can change the past, too.

The film's technical design will raise a few eyebrows, and the direction is heavily and unnecessarily borrowing from other films. But the ardent viewer will not get sidetracked by that and instead find a beautifully constructed film narration posing questions not only about the nature of love but also about the relationship between fiction and reality. If true love is really only an idea in our heads and completely immaterial, why shouldn't it then be able to outlast death or effect us from the half-reality of our dreams? Simple illusion is the last refuge from the beast that is death.

The two narrative levels interact with each other, influencing each other constantly. This cyclical structure forces the viewer to think deeper about the film's topics and about the nature of narration itself. Its construction tempts us to rewatch the film over and over, surprised by how such a seemingly simple story can hold so many original and interesting thoughts. Andrew and Dimitra, too, are only a story within a story, which in turn influences the fiction within the fiction just as much as the fiction does to the fiction within the fiction. It's the narrative structure that makes a brilliant whole out of clichéd parts.

Or, to quote Edgar Allan Poe:
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Links

• NOWHERE (GR 2009. Michael Monemvasiotis)
• On the Way to Yet Unknown Roads – An interview with Michael Monemvasiotis
• Like Phoenix Rising from the Ashes – Werner Busch about the Greek film market