The Boy with the Mild-Blue Eyes – first-look…

A cursed teenager goals of escape in Thanasis Neofotistos’ folkloric debut function, The Boy with the Mild-Blue Eyes. Set in a distant Greek mountain group ruled by superstition, it follows Petros (Giorgos Karydis), a sullen adolescent pressured to put on protecting goggles by his domineering grandmother and anxiously-devoted mom. The official clarification is that his eyes are dangerously delicate to mild. The true purpose, whispered by way of the village like scripture, is much older and crueler, is that Petros’ pale blue eyes carry the evil eye.

Shot over twelve years, Neofotistos builds the world of this movie with a powerful tactile drive. The panorama is significant not ornamental, with rocky paths, misty swamps, hanging charms and mountainous horizons to provide the sensation of a people story half-remembered from childhood. The sound design is suitably oppresive, particularly the fixed whoosh of a close by wind turbine which involves resemble a warning siren, or some historic curse returning by way of trendy equipment. The movie can also be strikingly claustrophobic as Neofotistos retains the digital camera pressed near his lead actor, refusing us the spatial launch we crave. It is sensible as an expression of Petros’ personal suffocation, constructing and deepening our reference to him because the story progresses. 

The place it lands hardest is as a queer allegory. Petros’ bond with Aemon (Pablo Soto) brings tenderness right into a world of inherited worry, making his ​“curse” play like a metaphor for distinction in a group constructed on conformity. But the movie is sensible sufficient to not flatten itself right into a single which means. Is that this supernatural horror, Greek tragedy, or all only a projection of Petros’ terror? Its greatest moments exist in these delicate ambiguities.