Cavafy

A bio-pic of the great (gay) Greek Alexandrian poet, related with discretion and evident admiration and shot with glissando camera movement and dark, often night-time, hues by cinematographer Nikos Emaragous. The film begins at Cavafy's death bed in 1933, and the episodes - from the waltzes in grand houses in the 1880s to later penury - are told as dream reverie. Cavafy, a passionate, but lonely, secretive and often strangely uncommunicative man, is quoted: 'I've brought to Art desires and sensations, things half-glimpsed, unfulfilled love affairs...' and that's what we're shown. Vangelis, to whom the film is dedicated, provides the emotional if occasionally trivialising score.