The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas (2013, dir. Elina Psikou)
The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas is the directorial debut for Greek writer-director Elina Psikou. It begins with a car drive towards an abandoned hotel with one man travelling inside the boot of the car. We soon discover that this man is the famous Greek morning TV presenter Antonis Paraskevas (Christos Stergioglou).
He has staged his own kidnapping in a bid to save himself from financial ruin and to spike the ratings of his own breakfast show.
Once Antonis is left alone in the hotel, the film starts to take on an almost survival horror feel, inside the bunker-like hotel. Antonis spends his days in isolation, waking up at 4am every morning – ironically, this is the time he must be awake for his breakfast show.
He learns about molecular gastronomy even though he eats the same spaghetti and tomato sauce meal every day, sings karaoke to an empty room and collects newspaper columns and celebrity magazine stories about his disappearance for his own narcissistic scrapbook.
However, as the interest in his kidnapping begins to wane, and even the TV channel he worked for replaces him with a younger presenter, Antonis begins to concoct a more elaborate plan for his big return. This is where the film splits from a deadpan comedy to reveal darker undertones as we descend into self–destructive depression and desperation with Antonis.
The second half of the film sees Antonis shave his beard and head and leave the hotel for the Greek countryside. He scrambles around the wilderness foraging food and avoiding detection from the public. This fictional crime becomes an actual emergency as he spirals further into madness and goes as far as cutting his finger off and writing a ransom note for the media to find.
The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas starts as a satire on the media, the idea of celebrity and the public’s appetite for fame, but it soon twists into a psychological thriller about one man’s obsession to remain in the public eye.
This obsession soon turns into madness as we see the once famous Antonis Paraskevas lose his identity.
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