Constantine Giannaris | Mia thesi ston ilio (A Place in the Sun) / 1994

a knife in the back

by Douglas Messerli

 

Constantine Giannaris (screenwriter and director) Mia thesi ston ilio (A Place in the Sun) / 1994

 

One of the most interesting of the LGBTQ filmmakers of the 1990s, Greek director Constantine Giannaris was already moving away from his focus strictly on gay and lesbian issues in A Place in the Sun of 1994.

     As he himself described it, the “eroticism” of his early works such as Caught Looking (1991) is here tempered considerably by his focus the issues of immigration that began to plague Greece in the mid-1990s as the Balkan countries’ Communist governments begin to fall, and millions of their citizens migrated to Greece not only for political asylum but for sexual freedom as well.

     The rather smugly set-in-his-ways, handsome, gay Athenian worker Ilias (Stavros Zalmas), whose narrative voice dominates this 45-minute film, notes that his city has changed, the former gay gathering night spots being taken over by the thousands of new immigrants from Romania, Serbia, Kosovo, and Albania, seeking mutual sexual contact and/or and/often both seeking men who will pay for them for their pleasures.

     Ilias is clearly not interested in long term relationships nor even, it appears, in friendships, but is perfectly happy picking up boys each night, often refusing to take them to his home for fear that sometime later they might return to rob him and put a knife in his back.

      If he sounds somewhat like a friendly bigot, he has reasons, as we shall see, for his fears. The first night of this film’s narrative he picks up a cute Romanian boy (Valentino Hagi) and enjoys the sex.

     Sitting in the café the next time we see him, Ilias spots a broodingly beautiful young Albanian, whom he immediately cruises, without success. But later that evening we see the young, Panagiotis (Panagiotis Tsitsas) join him, playing various macho games such as rolling a cigarette Ilias has offered him back and forth on the table, suggesting that before he’ll accept the gift he must make certain that it becomes his own, something that can easily be given back, as if the gift were of no matter to him. So too does Panagiotis play with Ilias’ sexual advances, enjoying the fact that in doing so, he remains in control.

      They go home and have sex and Ilias against all his former principles quickly grows to like the young man, offering him money and, in some respects, even a nightly bed.

       So too does Panagiotis seem to like and respect the older Greek man, needing the money he gives him just to survive but also slowly growing to like him. But still, a product of his macho culture, Panagiotis will not allow Ilias to kiss him on the lips, despite the fact that he allows his hands to stroke his face and body. He wishes Ilias, a clearly sis-gender male, might be a “tranny,” which would make it far easier for him to engage in their sexual acts.

       Ilias falls in love with him enough to even rouge his lips as a kind of compromise. And so the two continue, Ilias offering the advice of an elder, and Panagiotis developing a sort of dependence on his new lover. But that neediness and the resistance to admit it, pushes the relationship to its limits. Panagiotis is constantly in need of more money, and spends long hours in Ilias’ modest apartment watching TV instead of making love. Ilias, now desperately in love with the young man, also now fears that one night the brooding beefcake might still put a knife into his back.

       Given the negatives of the relationship and his latent fears, Ilias finally sends the Albanian boy off, as the camera shifts its focus, following the wanderings of Panagiotis as he attempts to survive, watches a small streetside musical performance by fellow Balkan performers with joy, and hooks up with men in the toilets, making plans to meet one of the young men (Ilias Marmaras) as a “customer.”

      From the beginning of the film, moreover, Giannaris has demonstrated the young Albanian’s dreams and imagination with fragmentary scenes in color, mostly simply snippets of Athens landscape in the bright sun, a world which Ilias does not seem to inhabit. But even these golden reveries do not quite seem enough for Panagiotis who has told Ilias that what he would really love is to work on a boat headed for America, the golden world of so many immigrants’ imagination.

       In the meantime, Ilias discovers just much he misses the boy, as his love becomes even more of an obsession, he roaming the streets in search of Panagiotis, sitting at the same table where he originally met him, etc. All of his time seems to now be devoted to finding Panagiotis, who has seemingly disappeared from the landscape.

      One night while driving through the square, however, Ilias suddenly spots him sitting on a metal railing and turns back to speak with him. The boy returns to Ilias, but he has changed, and is no longer open to Ilias’ sexual approaches. Finally, he reveals that he has robbed and stabbed to death a sexual customer and admits that the police are after him.

      Instead of throwing him out, as the boy feared, Ilias is now so obsessed with the dangerous boy that he determines to escape with him by ship to another world. In full color, obviously now representing both of their dreams and fantasies, the two drive to the pier; but instead of finding work on a ship, they confront one another is a game of switched identities.

      The very questions which Ilias first asked Panagiotis upon meeting him are reversed as the Albanian now challenges the Greek—“Where are you from, mate?”; “I’m Albanian.” “How long have you been here?; “Two and a half years.” “Got a job?”; “Yes.” “How much do you earn a day?; “5,000.” “Like it here?; “Yes, and you?” as the boy pretends he is an American from Chicago, encountering Ilias at a bar—the two of them now emphatically having switched roles, finally permitting them to come together in a deep, loving hug.

      The film seems to end, accordingly, on a note of reparative resolution as the credits appear. But after the credits we are returned, alas, to the mean world of reality. Both have been arrested, Panagiotis sent to Crete to stand trial, while Ilias still awaits a trial in Athens, his home city, which perhaps can no longer be described as such.

      Much like Montgomery Clift’s character in the George Stevens 1951 movie of the same name, the young Albanian immigrant is only punished for desiring a place in the sun.

 

Los Angeles, November 2, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2022).