The Years of the Big Heat

The remote island hotel run by the solitary Electra and her elderly godfather plays host, once again, to an Australian cousin, the peripatetic ex-painter Stefanos and his wife, among others - who're all, as one says, 'clumsy at being happy'. The state radio explains the continuing heatwave may result in 'loss of memory and disorientation', an effect compounded by the arrival of the mysterious Pavlos. Frieda Liappa's last film continues her fascination with the reconfiguration of melodrama (the first premonitory image is that of blood on sand) as a way to elucidate the darker realms of men's and, especially, women's hearts and minds, and to describe the often murky import of family and social history. Notable, too, is her poetic use of figures in a landscape and ambitious musical scoring.