The Summer With Carmen
Frustrated over being pigeonholed into stereotypical gay roles, actors and best friends Nikitas and Demos decide to spend their time on a nude beach concocting their own screenplay in this lovingly queer, playfully metatextual delight from Greece.
Continue the naked fun with a chance to win tickets to HUMP! at the May 15 screening.
Tickets
Select showtime for pricing and tickets.
Monday, May 20 - Monday, May 27, 2024
- Limited Availability
- On Standby
- Matinee
We open on a rocky beach—a cruisy gay nude beach in Greece, it’s immediately apparent. Two friends, Demosthenes (Yorgos Tsiantoulas) and Nikitas (Andreas Labropoulos), aspiring actor/screenwriters, while watching the goings-on, are mulling a film script based on reminiscences of the summer of the title, when Demos was half-heartedly attempting to end one relationship and start another, or maybe not. Carmen is the scruffy pup, owned by Demos’ ex, who winsomely complicated the matter. As they discuss the screenplay, it comes to life as a film-within-the-film, its scenes annotated with titles that function a bit like David Foster Wallace footnotes. (The prefix “meta,” after all, comes from the Greek.) Writer/director Zacharias Mavroeidis helpfully sets the scenes in the film’s present wholly on the nude beach, so you’ll have no trouble distinguishing them from the flashbacks. Alongside the affecting saga of a gay man navigating affairs of the heart and family troubles, The Summer With Carmen also, deftly, branches off at a surprising angle, lightly sending up several aspects of the filmmaking biz: the cliches and “rules” of storytelling, the demands of penny-pinching gatekeepers, even the conventions of self-referentiality itself.
—Gavin Borchert
- Original Language Title: To kalokairi tis Karmen
- Director: Zacharias Mavroeidis
- Principal Cast: Yorgos Tsiantoulas, Andreas Labropoulos, Roubini Vasilakopoulou, Nikolaos Mihas, Vasilis Tsigristaris
- Country: Greece
- Year: 2023
- Running Time: 106 min.
- Producer: Ioanna Bolomyti
- Screenplay: Fondas Chalatsis, Zacharias Mavroeidis
- Cinematographers: Thodoros Mihopoulos
- Editors: Livia Neroutsopoulou
- Music: Nikolas Konstantinou
- Filmography: Defunct (2019), Across Her Body (2018), The Guide (2010)
- Language: Greek
- Has Subtitles: Yes
- US Distributor: Dekkoo Films
- International Sales: Be For Films